The International Strad

November 2004

Violin as player

JohannaKeller visits New York's Nine Circles Chamber Theater, where the violin isplaced at the crux of the drama

Picture the scene on stage: it is 1945, and thebespectacled young philosopher Isaiah Berlin comes to Moscow and meets the55-year-old legendary Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova, dowdy and worn down byyears of stress under Stalinist rule. Behind them, like a ghost, hovers theglamorous and lithe figure of Anna in her youth, a dark flame, the darling ofthe Russian poetic world in the still-hopeful years of the dawn of the RussianRevolution. 'You are the guest from the future,' sings the older Anna to hervisitor from the West, while from the orchestra pit rises an achingly beautifulmelody played by the violin. It is a dream-like glimpse of one of the 20thcentury's most intriguing encounters between two of its most importantintellectuals.

It's no accident that the musical climax of Guest from theFuture, the new opera that had its premiere at New York's Bard College atAnnandale-on-Hudson this summer, belongs so prominently to the violin. For thisis the work of Nine Circles Chamber Theater, a critically acclaimed US-basedensemble co-directed by violinist Gil Morgenstern and novelist Jonathan Levi(who was trained as a violinist). Since their first production together in1998, their unusual ensemble has always put the violin front and centre in itsground-breaking works that explore new ways of combining music, text and drama.

'In founding Nine Circles Chamber Theater, our goal wassimple,' says Morgenstern. 'We wanted to work in a cross-disciplinary way andinvestigate the theatrical and dramatic possibilities of a concert experience.Along the way, we have also been exploring how the violin in particular cancommunicate without text.'

Like all of their productions, The Guest from the Futuredeveloped out of an intensive creative collaboration that Morgenstern likens tothe process of working with a chamber music ensemble. The libretto was writtenby Levi, music was composed by Mel Marvin, and the production was directed byDavid Chambers, with Morgenstern as musical director. The ensemble's workingmethod is extraordinarily comprehensive: while developing the work over thepast three years, the four men travelled together to Russia twice to conductresearch, interview disciples of Akhmatova and gather creative ideas. 'In StPetersburg and in Moscow we soaked up as much as we could,' says Morgenstern,'going to concerts, picking up traditional liturgical music that wasincorporated into the opera and meeting with musicians and writers. Meanwhile,the project grew from a chamber opera in our minds into a much larger piece.'

In its size (using 24 musicians and singers), this latestventure by the ensemble is a departure from earlier work, which began on asmaller chamber scale. The company had its beginnings when Levi (a novelist,journalist and founder of the literary journal Granta) was hired by theUnterberg Poetry Center at New York's 92nd Street Y to produce a musicalversion of a new translation by Robert Pinsky of Dante's Inferno in 1998.

'I ran into Gil,' Lev recounts, 'after not seeing him fora number of years and I told him about this Dante project. Now Gil is aviolinist who, unlike myself, has the talent to match his ego. He has atremendous solo career. And yet there was something about this that intriguedhim and he simply said, "I have to be a part of this." I think he wasfeeling that the grind of flying into a city and playing the TchaikovskyConcerto for the thousandth time was not for him and he was excited to explorethis idea of theatre and music combined.'

For the Dante production an effective electronic score byChris Walker was augmented by music for the violin by composer Bruce Saylor.This created what Levi has called 'the violin as Dante's alter ego,' and gaveMorgenstern the opportunity to explore dramatic interaction.

Morgenstern, in addition to maintaining a busy soloperforming schedule with such orchestras as the Baltimore, St Louis,Indianapolis, Denver and New Jersey symphony orchestras, is also acollaborative artist. He is the violinist and artistic director of the BroyhillChamber Ensemble and for more than a decade he has been artistic director ofthe Appalachian Summer Festival in Boone, North Carolina. He was a pupil ofIvan Galamian at Juilliard.

'One of the things I like best about Gil's playing,' Levisays, 'is that he can make the violin seem like a natural extension of thebody. He can make it speak as the voice of an involved character, or as adistant commentator. The violin is so adaptable - capable of playing solo linesor being harmonic, or percussive for that matter. It can be pure drama.'Visions of Dante turned out to be an intriguing dialogue for solo violin andactors that captured the attention of New York critics and audiences and wasperformed on a tour of the US. Buoyed by their success and intrigued by thecreative possibilities of this first collaborative venture, Morgenstern andLevi formed the company and took its name from Dante's vision of theunderworld.

Nine Circles' second production, The Scrimshaw Violin,premiered in 2001 at 92nd Street Y and was equally successful. Based on a shortstory by Levi, the chamber opera in one act told of a rabbi who arrives on theisland of Nantucket. Beset by religious doubts but possessed of an uncannyability to identify the cause of death by touch, the rabbi meets a whalingheiress who introduces him to a violin that is presumed to be made of scrimshaw(carved whalebone). To his horror, the rabbi discovers it is in fact anartifact from the Holocaust.

The story, with its central image of the violin and athematic exploration into the significance of music making, offered myriadmusical and dramatic possibilities to exploit the sound and character of theinstrument.

'If there is any art, it is in how stories are told,'Morgenstern says.

'Of course I'm most comfortable communicating with aviolin in my hand. But I've always been looking for new ways to expand thepossibilities of the instrument. The violin is a tough prop. Onstage, it can beawkward. How can you incorporate it without, well, schtick? How can you use theviolin, the physicality of it being there making music, and still convey theintent of a dramatic work? For me, this has been the challenge.'

Written by Saylor, the music for the Scrimshaw Violin wasscored for four singers, violin, viola, clarinet, bass and piano. Morgenstern,in the leading musical role, interacted with the characters while he played,becoming at times a separate character, at other times a kind of invisibledoppelganger. The Scrimshaw Violin was a unique blend of chamber music andtheatre, and proved to be a gripping work recognised by critics as a trulyinnovative galvanisation of words, music and drama. Critic David Noh writing inOpera News called it 'modern opera in the best sense: concise, witty, elegantand bold.'

'Our mission has been to create chamber theatre and makesomething entirely new,' Levi says. 'As with chamber music, for most of ourproductions there has been no conductor. We all work in concert and there is ameeting of equals. You might say we are trying to make a form of chamber musicwhere everyone is breathing together. In developing all our pieces, we workshopthe ideas and it is like rehearsing a string quartet. Everyone has ideas. Andall the ideas count.'

The idea for the next production came from Morgenstern'sexperience as the son of parents who had fled their native Austria in 1938 whenthe Nazis marched into Vienna. In 2003 Nine Circles presented an exploration ofpoet Paul Celan, who was imprisoned by the Nazis, lost his father and mother inthe death camps and committed suicide in 1970. The Art of the Fugitive: TheParadoxical Life of Paul Celan incorporated the poet's words along with theChaconne from Bach's Sonata for solo violin in D minor, new music by Saylor andselections from Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps. It was a rivetingevening that was not a song cycle, nor a biography, nor an opera, but aritualistic and stately evocation of the poet's agonising losses.

Using structural techniques more akin to collage ormontage, Levi and Morgenstern fashioned an 80-minute evening of poetry andmusic that climaxed with a chilling performance of Celan's poem Todesfuge(death fugue). While Morgenstern delivered an intensively focused performanceof the Bach Chaconne, the actor intoned Celan's famous lines:

Black milk ofdaybreak we drink it at evening

we drink itat midday and morning we drink it at night

we drink andwe drink

we shovel agrave in the air where you won't lie too cramped

Just a small example of the intellectual rigour thatMorgenstern and Levi have employed in creating these works is evidenced in thechoice of the Bach Chaconne for this moment in the drama. Consider that Celanwas a poet who chose to write in German, the language of Bach and of his Nazioppressors; also consider that many German and Austrian Jews prior to the riseof the Nazis had assimilated the great works of German culture - from Bach toGoethe. Therefore the juxtaposition of this Bach masterpiece with Todesfugecreated a moving dialogue between past and present, a clash of culturalpolitics and language, and a commentary on great art that outlasts its makers.

For Morgenstern, however, the most demanding production sofar has been When Samson Met Delilah, premiered at Symphony Space, New York in2004. A 'reconception for violin and voice' of Saint-Saens's Samson et Delilah,the 70-minute production distilled the opera to a two-character work with therole of Delilah sung by mezzo-soprano Klara Uleman and Samson played byMorgenstern on the violin.

'We asked Bruce Saylor to write a contemporary voice forSamson,' Morgenstern explains, 'and he made it work with the Saint-Saens.Delilah's music is right out of the opera. She would sing and I would answer onthe violin. After the first few minutes the audience got used to the conceitand it really worked.'

For the violinist, it was a tour de force performance. Inorder to prepare himself for what amounted to playing an opera role withoutsinging a note, Morgenstern spent five weeks working daily with the Dutchdirector Corina van Eijk. The work, he said, was arduous.

'It was a completely new kind of training,' Morgensternremembers. 'I had to play on my knees - that was frightening and disorientingat first. She made me aware of everything I was doing, from closing my eyes tolooking at the violin. It freed me from narrow vision and made me listen to myplaying in a completely different way. I had to learn to communicate as anactor would. It was all very liberating.'

Morgenstern points out that because most instrumentalistsconcentrate on a narrow set of physical skills in order to master theirinstruments, and sometimes work in isolation, they can become locked intoparticular ways of moving that can affect musical phrasing and even listening.

'During my years working with Jonathan and others, thecollaborative process has changed me,' Morgenstern says. 'I go from thischamber-theatre experience back into my little box playing, for instance thisweek, a Dvorak Piano Quintet. And I find that everything is different for me.I'm much more free. At home I've got two kids who play instruments and wheneverthey come to talk to me about phrasing in the music they are playing, we talkabout what story it might elicit. I've come to see that narrative is built intoeverything. It's really all about story.'

So where will the story of Nine Circles Chamber Theatertake Levi and Morgenstern next? They are currently working on a project thatincorporates a Russian animation of Gogol's The Overcoat. And they areconsidering developing a theatre work about Dvorak's visit to the US. Afterthat, who knows?

One thing is certain - wherever the next Nine Circlesproduction goes, audiences are bound to be intrigued by this ensemble'soriginal blend of words, music and drama, and by their exploration of theseemingly limitless possibilities of the violin.

For more details see www.ninecircles.organd www.gilmorgenstern.com