David Grimal

Álvaro Teixeira: Many years ago I wrote in a newspaper that this concert (Erich Korngold's violin concert) is nothing but an ultra-romantic pastiche. I still think exactly the same...

David Grimal: I think it is a very kitschy music. It's very Hollywoodesque music but with Viennese roots. In the central part of the second movement there is like a reminder of Schoenberg. But everything else is almost minimalistic. Korngold was the one who started writing in the minimalistic style. Now we have John Williams and others who write in that style, which is completely kitsch.

AT: But even that melody in the second movement is not very well constructed. In my opinion. Then there are strong dissonances that are disintegrated from the context, from the musical discourse.

DG: I don't know about that. It's quite naif, especially, the melody in the second movement. I think that within the genre that this work represents it is quite accomplished. But... we can't say it's serious music.

AT: You just played a very interesting piece (an extra by Bela Bartók), how come you play a null piece like this Korngold concert?

(much laughter)

DG: We don't always choose with whom and what we are going to play... But this is part of the music too. I play a lot of Beethoven's concerto, Brahms', Bartók's, Berg's, or Mozart's but I also play Paganini and Korngold which are also part of life. You can have a different pleasure playing them and listening to them. These are different things that exist and that I think are worth playing.

AT: The problem is that for you violinists there is not much repertoire... Contrary to the piano for example.

DG: That's not true. I have fifty pieces in my repertoire and I have to study fifty more. It's a huge repertoire. I don't know if my whole life will be enough to play the whole repertoire. You can play Pendereski, Lutoslawski, Britten, I don't know what else... the Schoenberg concerto, all the French music, the lesser known concertos of Miklos Rosa...

AT: Rosa?

DG: Rosa is a Hungarian who went to Hollywood too. There's a lot to play and to discover. But great works? Beethoven concertos there is only one. There are not five. By Mozart there are not thirty. There aren't two by Brahms, not counting the double concerto. But there is also one Schumann concerto, one Elgar concerto, two Prokovief concertos, two Chostakovich concertos...

AT: At the level of contemporary music are there many works for solo violin?

DG: There aren't that many. There are many more for solo cello, in fact. In the twentieth century the cello got a great deal of prominence because people like Rostropovitch did a lot of work with the composers and the violinists were lazier. So much so that if for the cello there are many works, for the violin in fact there is no real succession to Bartók's sonata. I looked it up. There is a sonata by Zimmermann that I don't think has the same quality.

AT: I don't know that work but Zimmermann is a great composer.

DG: He is a great composer but that piece for violin is not, in my opinion, on the level of the Bartók sonata. I mentioned Zimmermann precisely because he is a great composer. I've worked with many composers who have written...

AT: Doesn't Pascal Dusapin have anything for violin solo?

(silence)

AT: You don't like Dusapin...

DG: I don't know. I don't know everything by Dusapin. He wrote a little piece for cello but that's not a serious thing... But that depends on whether we talk about serious things or whether we talk about everything. We were very harsh on Kornagold but in contemporary music there is a lot of "Korngold" too. And they're alive!

AT: Well... I know Dusapin's work well and in my opinion he is a great composer. But I don't know that piece for cello. But what is for you the limit between serious and non-serious music?

DG: For me it is not a good question because there is no serious music and non-serious music. There is a serious way to approach music or a non-serious way to approach music. The non-serious way doesn't interest me. That's why even Korngold's music for me can also be serious in the limits of its framing. But it can be works seriously too. That's it.

AT: But then we have fickle limits... We can say that the last movement of Korngold's concert is absolutely kitsch. We were in agreement: it's not serious music. We can't say now, after a few minutes, that it is serious music after all.

DG: But that's not it. What can be serious is the way you play it.

AT: The way you play it.

DG: Exactly. I'm not a composer. I'm not a composer, or a critic, or a teacher of aesthetic reflection. I'm simply an interpreter. That means I must play all the music. My mission is to play everything. But each thing I play, I play it according to its character, according to its context but with the respect for the composer's work that I am not capable of doing anyway. Then there is the music that I refuse to play because it is dishonest. But for me Korngold is not dishonest music. It is a sincere music. Kitschy but sincere.

AT: Can you give me an example of dishonest music?

DG: Dishonest music... Yes, I'll give you an example of dishonest music... There are works yes... But I'm not going to talk about them in front of a microphone. In front of a bottle of wine we can discuss music. There are even very respectable and very serious composers... In Chostakovich, for example, there are dishonest works. For me. He has extraordinary works but he also has works where he is not sincere. I know that it was because of the system that he was forced to write somewhat propaganda works.

AT: These are particular cases...

DG: They are particular cases I know but there are works in Beethoven that are circus pieces and poorly achieved. He saw that himself. We can find many situations among the Mayans who wrote music because they were forced to. Hence that music doesn't work. And we can at the same time see it in lesser composers like Korngold, who was nevertheless a gifted composer but who started doing shit like this concerto, but he did it with humor. Hence I accept this. I prefer this, where there is nevertheless talent, to more scholarly stuff like Lallo's Spanish Symphony which is more stupid. Much stupider. There are works by Saint-Sains that are also stupider.

AT: ...

DG: The Rondo-Capricious was achieved as a circumstance piece. It's not serious music but it was well conceived. But the first concert was not.

AT: Do you live in France or in the United States?

DG: I live in Paris!

AT: How did you start speaking English... You see, there are some French musicians who went to the US... Hélène Grimaud went to live there...

DG: Is that true?!

AT: Yes, it is, why do you think she went there?

DG: I don't know. We'll have to ask her.

(much laughter)

AT: What do you have to say about post-Boulez French music? Do you believe there is more aesthetic freedom now than when Boulez controlled everything?

DG: You can't say we're in post-Boulez because Boulez is still the pope. But there are quite a few aesthetic currents in France and the language is in the process of being re-defined, there is no longer a homogeneous language. It's very difficult to know, when there is no historical continuity from the point of view of language, what has value or not. It's hard to say what's experimental and what's going to stay because it's a language that's going to have continuity. The present time, for me, is a period of transition where you are going to find a historical continuity with the past, either with tonal music or with modal music, or with other expressive paths that in my understanding are either in modality or in tonality because in my understanding serial music will always remain in an experimental state.

AT: Do you think that all the post-serialism, all the kind of serialized techniques will always remain in an experimental state?

DG: I think that serial music doesn't work for the big forms. It works for the small forms like in Webern. And Berg is tonal music not serial music. So it works very well indeed. Serial music is very interesting but it doesn't work. Like the Ars Subtilior of the 13th century which was pure contrapuntal music, this doesn't work. The monks were doing twenty-four canons at the same time... this doesn't work. Music needs a center. This is very interesting on paper but it doesn't work. In serial music it is the same. There are many events at the same time without an organic continuity and a correlation of tension and distension. And that's what music is. Modal music is less in this register of tension/distension but is very descriptive through colorations. For me the serial language in the form of classical music doesn't works.