E-mail a friendJoshua Bell
airdate August 18, 2008
The world was first exposed to Joshua Bell's violin virtuosity at age 14, in his Philadelphia Orchestra debut. He's continued to captivate audiences throughout a two-decade career, recording more than 30 original albums and earning multiple Grammys. He also performed all the violin solos in The Red Violin, which won a best original score Oscar, and provided solos for the soundtrack of Angels and Demons. Bell was the first musician to have a classical music video played on VH1. "At Home with Friends" is his newest CD.
Violinist explains why the Stradivarius violin that he plays is rare and costs several millions of dollars. (2:22)
Full Interview. (11:35)
Joshua Bell
Tavis: Joshua Bell is a Grammy-winning violinist who is about to release his latest CD called "Vivaldi: The Four Seasons." He's also taking part in the Stand Up to Cancer telethon on September 5th, and for those of you here in the Southern California area he'll be at the Hollywood Bowl tomorrow night with the L.A. Phil. From the new project, here is some of the recording session for "Vivaldi: The Four Seasons."
[Clip]
Tavis: Nice to see you.
Joshua Bell: How are you?
Tavis: You all right?
Bell: Yeah, I'm okay. (Laughter) I'm not - I'm watching that clip; I hadn't seen that. That was from the sessions of the "Four Seasons," so it was funny to see what they got there.
Tavis: Why this record?
Bell: Well, Vivaldi - "The Four Seasons" is one of the great masterpieces for the violin. It was written about 300 years ago, but it's timeless and everyone loves the piece. It's one of my favorites and I've been playing it all my life, so I finally decided to put it down on disc.
Tavis: What - I want to phrase this the right way - you play so much stuff. Of the stuff that you play like "The Four Seasons," how do you decide - that's what I want to say - how did you decide what actually makes it in a recording session as opposed to a live session?
Bell: Well, I perform many things during the year and certain things I play every year that's part of my standard repertoire - the Beethoven and the Brahms and "The Four Seasons." And eventually I feel like I'm ready to put it down. The problem with records is that they're so permanent, that this is - when it's on disc this is the way you do it, and 30 years from now or 50 years, 100 years from now, they're going to say, "This is how you played it."
And I don't feel comfortable putting down in a recording until I really have played it a lot, but even then probably a year from now I'll think oh, shoot, I should have done it differently, but that's the way it works.
Tavis: To your point now, are there nights when you think or when you know you have done infinitely better than the last time you played, or is it just marginal? I would think at your level the difference between what's a great performance, even by your own judgment, and what's a good performance must be marginal at your level.
Bell: Well, yeah, this is true, although the difference between playing very well and really well, it is all the difference, in a way, in every field, really. The difference between Tiger Woods and the others in golf is a very small, but very important difference. And I know when I feel like I've really done close to my best - it's a great feeling.
But my worst usually doesn't go too far down. (Laughter) Although I've had some nights -
Tavis: Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make - your worst ain't too bad, exactly.
Bell: But I try to be - I think I'm fairly consistent. But there are those nights where all the stars align and you just feel like the energy is great, and I feel prepared and the audience, their participation makes a big difference. And so that's a great feeling.
Tavis: You've just answered some of what I wanted to ask. Let me ask anyway, because there may be something else you want to add to that list. The difference between, as you said, really good and good, or as I said great and good - whatever that marginal difference is, what are the factors that make up the difference? Is it what you said a moment ago, the audience, and?
Bell: In music, for me, listening to a great performer, there's a quality, something - you can listen to a great student or go to a violin competition and hear a lot of great people, but the one or two that stand out are the ones that just own the piece and really take you into that world. And for me, I call it the goosebump factor. There are just some people that manage to give you the goosebumps, and it's hard to even put your finger on what that is, but it's true in acting and film.
There are just some people that have it, and the same with great music. There's a reason why Beethoven's music has survived, and there were many great composers during his time that we know nothing about. But Beethoven, his music was just that extra something that just captures you.
Tavis: Fair to say - it is my assessment; who cares what I think - fair to say that in any field, Beethoven, the greatest composer, ever?
Bell: Is Beethoven?
Tavis: Yeah.
Bell: Certainly would be on the top of my list, but I can't leave out Mozart or Schubert or Brahms or even Vivaldi. They're great in their own ways. So luckily, I don't have to choose; I get to do lots of things.
Tavis: (Laughter) This instrument that you play, so much has been written about it, and there are only a handful of these in the world these days. Give me the history of it, tell me about it. It's worth a nice little piece of change.
Bell: (Laughter) This is true. Well, after mentioning Beethoven, one of the great human beings that walked the Earth, Stradivarius is another. He took something - the art of violin making - and made something so much greater than anything else, and so great that we're still playing on them and looking for them.
This was made in 1713. It did cost several million dollars; as we all know, now these are very valuable, sort of like a great Renoir painting, and there are very few. They're in great demand, and so I feel very lucky to - every day I open my case and have this to look at, and it inspires me to practice.
Tavis: So do you sleep with your case? Something that valuable -
Bell: Well, I'm not that extreme. (Laughter)
Tavis: Obviously you're not checking to see -
Bell: I like it - it's just that - (laughter).
Tavis: You're not checking this thing at airports, obviously.
Bell: No, I keep it with me on the airplanes, and I do keep it within my sight almost all the time.
Tavis: Do you let people touch it?
Bell: Sure.
Tavis: Might I touch this thing?
Bell: Just be careful. (Laughter)
Tavis: This is quite - I'd better give it back to you real fast before I do something.
Bell: Thank you. Yeah, it's -
Tavis: I've never seen anything so light that's worth so much money.
Bell: It is a remarkable acoustical achievement. It's very subtle. Every little aspect of the instrument contributes to the way it resonates.
Tavis: Tell me more about that. I was about to ask, what makes the (unintelligible)?
Bell: Well, the thickness of the wood at all points, even the shape of the F-holes - if I were to shave a tiny bit off the edge of the F-holes here or even loosen the chin rest, the whole balance of the sound changes. It's a marvel of acoustics that we don't really understand it completely. Stradivarius seemed to master it. Even the varnish affects the sound.
But he found a way that we really haven't been able to duplicate - the resonance and the depth of sound and the overtones - it's just very, very special. I think it's beautiful to look at, too.
Tavis: Yeah, it is. You and I are both Hoosiers.
Bell: That's true.
Tavis: You, born and raised in Bloomington; I went to school at IU, as did you.
Bell: I did, too.
Tavis: Congratulations, I just read you're going back to be the guest lecturer - you're lecturing at the music school.
Bell: Yeah, well, the music school gave me so much - the Indiana University, now called the Jacobs School of Music. It's known as one of the greatest in the world, and I was so fortunate, I just grew up around the corner from the greatest teacher in the world, Josef Gingold, and they gave me so much. Now they've been asking me if I'd come back and teach a little bit, and now I'm on their faculty.
I'm still performing my usual schedule but I'll manage to go there regularly, and it'll be great to go back to school there.
Tavis: Yeah, it must be nice to be asked back to -
Bell: We were there almost at the same time.
Tavis: The same time, we were close by. How did you - I know the story, and those of us who are Hoosiers who are fans of yours know your story. How did you get - you started really young - the story of the rubber bands on the drawer? I know you've told it a thousand times. It's a great story, though.
Bell: Well, I grew up in a pretty musical family, so although my parents were not musicians, my mother played the piano, my father had a violin - he was an amateur violinist and psychotherapist, but he (laughter) had a violin.
Tavis: Wait, and which helped you more, his background in -
Bell: He was just a good dad. He was a good dad. In spite of the fact that he was a therapist, I think he was a good dad.
Tavis: Okay.
Bell: But he loved music and my mother played music, and so I used to copy the tunes I heard from my mother on the piano, and I would copy them on my homemade instrument - my dresser drawers. I would string rubber bands across the dresser drawers and open up the drawers to make different pitches. And my parents discovered me doing this and said, "Let's get him an instrument right away." So I was four when they gave me my first tiny, tiny violin, and that's how it started.
Tavis: Wow. When you get to the point that you are at now in your career, how do you elevate to another level? Is there another level? You mentioned Tiger as a good example - you mentioned Tiger earlier.
Bell: I like his example. Some people ask me, they say, "Do you still have to practice?" Which is - in fact, you have to practice even more. But Tiger is a great inspiration to all of us when you see him going out there. He's the best in the world and he goes out there and hits balls like he's done a million before, and keeps hitting it and improving.
As a musician, it's great to be in the world of music because there's so much - you just know how much you can improve. The music itself is always so much greater than what we can do. We're always trying to aspire to play the ideal - our ideal version of the Beethoven violin concerto because the music is so great.
So we always feel that there's room to grow, and it never gets stagnant. So I spend plenty of time in the practice room trying to figure out still how to pull the bow across the string in a more efficient way and trying to get more sounds out of the instrument. It's always challenging.
Tavis: I was about to ask and you just answered it, I guess - if you ask Tiger what he could be better at in his game, even though he's awfully good, he could tell you. If you ask me "How can you be a better talk show host," I know people who are a lot better than I am at this and I could tell you the things I could get better at. And I was about to ask whether or not you know what that next level is. I think you -
Bell: Well, I do. There are many things - and you might say, "Well, the audience, would they really know the difference?" And in some ways no, but in other ways, even if they don't know why, when you do things well they do know the difference, whether they can articulate it or not. That goes back to the goosebump factor I mentioned before.
When you do something even better, do it really well, it affects the way they experience the music in ways they will never be able to describe, maybe. But it does - I think even the novice audience listener will know when you've played your best.
Tavis: I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night here at the Bowl. What should I expect?
Bell: Well, tomorrow I'm playing - I hope to see you there, that'll be great. I'm playing with the wonderful L.A. Philharmonic, and at a place that's so much fun to play at, the Hollywood Bowl. And playing two great pieces, the Chausson "Poem," which is a French romantic piece, one of the most beautiful pieces of the repertoire, and then Saint Saens, another French composer, rewrote the introduction of "Rondo Capriccioso," which is one of the great show pieces. So it's a sort of show piece repertoire tomorrow night, but I'm looking forward to it.
Tavis: One of the best ever, and still getting better because he's so young now. His name, of course, Joshua Bell. His new CD, "Vivaldi: The Four Seasons." He is here in town for those of us who are fortunate enough to be in the California area. I suspect you can't get a ticket right about now anyway - I may have trouble getting in.
Bell: I'll get you in.
Tavis: But I'll hop over the fence. I'll get in tomorrow night. Good to see you.
Bell: Thanks for having me.
Tavis: Take care.
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