Leila Josefowicz: Portrait of a Woman with Violin
La Scena Musicale
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(c) La Scena Musicale 1999
Leila Josefowicz: Portrait of a Woman with Violin
by Philip Anson
From the time she first took up a miniature violin at the age of
three, Canadian violin prodigy Leila Josefowicz (pronounced Lee-la
Jo-se-foe-wits) has been on a collision course with success. Don’t be
distracted by her Californian blondness, toothpaste smile and
easy-going demeanour, picked up in Los Angeles, where her parents
live. At 21, Josefowicz has left her child prodigy years behind her.
Today she is a mature musician determined to take a place beside her
musical idols, including legendary mid-century violinists Nathan
Milstein, Jascha Heifetz, and Fritz Kreisler.
"Sound is everything. Technique comes second. I’m a tonalist,"
declared Josefowicz last month from her apartment on New York’s Upper
West Side, where she moved after graduating from Philadelphia’s Curtis
School of Music. "I like the way the Old Guys play," she says,
referring to her idols, whose recordings fill her shelves. "I’ve been
listening to Bronislaw Huberman recently. His playing is not perfect,
but he has the guts to be unique. He didn’t care what people said. I
respect that."
Josefowicz has been spending considerable time in the recording studio
recently. The day before our interview, she had finished her latest
album for Philips Classics, an "American" program with some
unpublished Heifetz arrangements, Gershwin, Vieuxtemps’ Variations On
Yankee Doodle Dandy, and a ragtime tune written for her by pianist
John Novacek. Josefowicz loves the recording process.
"I give as much or more in recordings than in live performance,
because recordings are forever. I play like there may not be a
tomorrow," she enthused. Recording an album is an arduous process;
this album took five, 10-hour days. "We did it in long single takes
mostly, to keep it spontaneous. It helps if you have a strong "audio
vision" of what you want to achieve. I played until we got the right
spirit and attitude. Luckily I have stamina." As for post-production
editing, Josefowicz admits, "These days recordings are too clean, with
all the roughness edited out. I prefer as little editing as possible,
and I have to approve changes."
Leila Bronia Josefowicz was born in Toronto on October 20, 1977 to an
intellectual Polish-English family. Her mother Wendy is a geneticist
and her father Jack is a physicist. The family moved to California
while Leila was a toddler, and Leila has rarely been back to Canada,
though she keeps in touch with her Ontario relatives.
When Josefowicz started studying Suzuki violin at the age of three and
a half, it was discovered she had perfect pitch and a passion for the
instrument. At five she started formal lessons with Idel Low. At eight
she switched to Robert Lipsett, California’s top violin teacher. As a
cute child prodigy, Leila played at Hollywood parties as well as
serious concerts. Her repertoire included concertos such as Paganini
No. 1, Saint-Saëns No.3, Bruch No. 1, Wieniawksi No.2, Vieuxtemps No.
5, and Mozart No. 3. Stage fright was never a problem. "I’m an
extrovert, a performer. This is entertainment," she once remarked. At
10 years of age she appeared on an NBC television tribute to Bob Hope,
which led to a contract with the powerful company, IMG Management.
"Having management so early was a great break. It helped a lot," she
admitted.
When Leila was 13 her family moved to Philadelphia so she could attend
the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, a small school with 150
students, all on scholarship. Leila attended Curtis part-time from 13
to 16, when she started the full-time Bachelor of Music program.
"Personally, I liked Curtis. It was less commercial than some other
schools," she affirmed. "Everyone more or less knew each other. Unlike
Juilliard, it felt like a big family. On the other hand there wasn’t
much breathing room." While other students dreamed of professional
careers, Leila was already touring extensively and was on familiar
terms with conductors like Seiji Ozawa and Neville Marriner, who
became her mentor.
Leila’s work ethic has always been exceptionally strong. Even her
father described her as "determined and driven." In Philadelphia she
habitually got up at dawn and practiced for several hours before
attending morning classes at a special high school for the gifted,
where she was an A-student. Afternoons were spent at Curtis with
teachers Jaime Laredo, Joseph Gingold, Felix Galimer, and Jascha
Brodsky. Still in her teens, she played with the symphonic orchestras
of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Montreal
and Toronto. In 1994 Leila signed an exclusive recording contract with
Philips Classics, recording the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos the
same year. When graduation time rolled around, she was too busy to
accept her Curtis diploma in person. "I had a concert to play
somewhere else," she recalls.
After Curtis, Leila moved to New York, now her permanent base. Leila’s
next CD project for Philips Classics is a sonata album "that shows the
many ways I can play." She is also excited about her recording
sessions with "Charlie" and the MSO in May. They will record the
Mendelssohn Concerto, Prokofiev’s Concertos No. 1 and No. 2, and
Tchaikovsky’s Sérénade mélancolique. For the last four years she has
played the 1739 "Ebersolt" Guarnerius del Gesù loaned by Dr. Herbert
Axelrod. "It is a great instrument, though not the easiest for me
personally, since I was used to playing on a Strad," she says,
referring to the 1708 "Ruby" Strad loaned to her by the Stradivari
Society in 1993-94. On her 1995 album of Tchaikovsky and Sibelius
concertos (Philips 446-131-2) she plays both of these violins.
Off stage, Leila is an average young woman. She relaxes by playing
sports that don’t endanger her valuable hands (she even wears boxing
gloves to play volleyball). "I’m a huge Miles Davis fan and I love
Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan." About the oddest thing in her
career to date is a compilation CD called Violin for Anne Rice, with a
tie-in to Anne Rice’s novel Violin. "It was Philips Classics’ idea.
Anne’s assistants brought her a whole bunch of violin recordings to
listen to while she wrote the book. She heard my recordings and we
met. That was that."
To her credit, Leila Josefowicz still refuses to employ the soft-core
marketing techniques that helped make Vanessa Mae, Ofra Harnoy and
Liona Boyd household names, however much her label Philips Classics
may want it. She gets to approve the pictures used on her CDs,
"Nothing cheesy!" she insists. "They are marketing me as the person I
am. I mean, they’re not trying to give me any special strange
mystique."
In our superficial age of publicity and hype, Josefowicz is intent on
building a respectable career without the help of crossover gimmicks
or sexy marketing campaigns. "I’m a serious musician and I’m going to
stay that way," she declares.
Leila Josefowicz plays the Mendelssohn Concerto in E minor with the
Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Charles Dutoit March 2 & 3 at Salle
Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montreal. Tel: (514) 842-9951.
Billetrie : Tel: (514) 842-2112. Admission: (514) 790-1245.