Adela Drozdova - violinist and graduate of Prague's prestigious music academy
Adela Drozdova is a charming and most talented violinist who recently performed a final graduation concert to finish her studies at Prague's distinguished music academy HAMU, a repertoire that included Baroque works by Jean Philippe Rameau and Jean-Marie Leclair, as well as contemporary pieces by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky. Discussed in this week's One on One: what it takes to become a professional musician, the London Symphony Orchestra, and just how aggravating it is when a cell phone goes off in the middle of a concert.
I want to congratulate you on a truly beautiful concert... in the first half we had Baroque pieces, in the second Prokofiev, Stravinsky - I wanted to ask you how that programme was put together...
"Well, I started to play the Baroque violin in London and that's why I decided to do two Baroque pieces. I chose two French composers and I wanted to have a whole French programme, but, I realised that I would play only Impressionism and I wanted to chose other pieces as well, so that's how I came to add two Russian composers that have big connections to France and French music."
So, you have a completely free hand in this, even though its officially your final concert as a graduate?
"In a way, yeah, it shouldn't be a whole evening of chamber music because you have to play as a soloist as well and show some technical skills so that you can be marked on the progress you've made during your studies. And, I must say it was a bit funny to play on Baroque violin because I didn't study this instrument at the academy but I started in London - at the Guildhall school - and my teacher here in Prague didn't have much influence over how I would play the piece, so it wasn't very fair to him. But, he agreed I could do the two Baroque pieces on a different instrument, than I actually studied in Prague."
Is it common, to take up a different kind of violin so late, so to speak?
"Um, it's getting more and more common because " authentic interpretation", as people call it, is getting more and more popular in a way. The violin itself doesn't look different at all, but it is different and it's set differently and it's held differently, and it's been a challenge for me..."
What is the difference in the sound characteristic of the Baroque violin?
"In a way it's weaker, but it's got much more colour in the sound I would say. It's because of the strings, because they're made of gut - they're real gut strings. It's not as piercing and not as focused, not as strong as the new strings sound, but it's much more suitable for the old music."
How did you yourself begin playing? Is music in the family?
"It always has been, I guess, because my family comes from Moravia and they always played loads of folk music. Both my grandfathers have been playing and singing all their lives and my father loves jazz and he can play just about any instrument, really. But, they have never been professional musicians, and I don't think they ever thought I would be. But, we had a funny neighbour, who could hear me through the walls singing and clapping my hands, and he decided I would be a professional musician! {laughs} And he decided when I was three years old! And he kept talking to my Mum, and telling her to send me to a music school, and she said 'You must be crazy - she's three!' I'm not going to let her go somewhere and be tortured by silly teachers! But, he wouldn't stop and so she decided to take me to a music school near where we lived. She met a music theory and singing teacher and told him 'the neighbour says she sings in tune and she's got rhythm', and after a year I got my first violin and started playing the violin!"
Professionals can tell fairly early on when a student has that special quality towards becoming a good musician?
"I think so, yeah. When the child starts with an instrument you can tell more, because that's also the hands..."
But the violin is something that came naturally...
"No, not at all! My Mum always wanted me to play the piano. But this lovely little teacher that she spoke to first, he said the best teacher they had was a violin teacher. He basically decided for us. And I was very lucky: this teacher was my teacher for the next twenty years, and she was great. She really taught me everything I needed, and was just perfect."
Take me through, then, the studies that you've done...
"After the original music school I auditioned for the 'conservatory'. After that, you have to decide again, and I auditioned for the academy in Prague and I studied with professor Petr Messiereur. I had three years there, and then I decided I wanted to go somewhere abroad, and I applied for an exchange programme, called Erasmus, the European Union's exchange programme. I was given a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. I spent a year there as an exchange student."
How does the co-operation with the London Symphony Orchestra work?
"Ah, that was last year and it's a very good thing the London Symphony Orchestra is doing. To get new, young people to play in the orchestra they held auditions in music colleges in London, and they sent members to each of the colleges to listen to chosen musicians. Then, they chose about nine violinists, five viola players and cellists and bass players, to do a string experience scheme. Which means you are invited to rehearse with them and perform three concerts with the orchestra and it's... it's just great. It's such an opportunity, you know, I would never dream of playing in such a great orchestra. Concerts with different conductors and pieces and each of them was interesting and worth doing. It was interesting to see the orchestra from the inside, and I guess I realised that you have similar people in every orchestra."
Essentially, you're saying they have some kind of idiosyncrasies...
{laughs} "Yeah, I'm afraid so... You know, it's always the orchestra against the conductor..."
It is?
"Yeah, of course!... Except for when the conductor is a real personality, you know..."
One little thing, kind of a teasing question I was going to ask is 'What is more dismaying: when you're performing at a concert and someone's cell phone goes off, or when you're in the metro and you hear someone's mobile phone butchering a composition by Bach?
{laughs} "Ta-ta-da-da-ta-da-da-ta-da-da! Well, I must say it happened once at my concert that a friend's phone went off, because she's only used to receiving phone calls from her husband, who was sitting next to her at that moment. She didn't even think it was her phone, so she let it go and it was getting louder and louder. We had to stop and started laughing and we couldn't play afterwards and... I wasn't annoyed at all, you know? On the other hand, I... I went to a concert of Vengerof at Prague Spring, it was like four years ago or something, and at the end of Prokofiev F Minor Sonata, after that wonderful ending, someone's phone went off and I was really annoyed then. But, Bach being butchered by mobile phones, well, if people like it, and it's a sign of people liking Bach, and this very famous B Minor suite, why not?"
