Source:  Town & Country Monthly, April 1994 v148 n5167 p85(7).
Title:  String fever. (child prodigy, violinist Sarah Chang)
Author:  Jesse Frohman
Abstract:  Child-prodigy Sarah Chang emigrated from South Korea in 1979 and
now studies violin at Juilliard. As a violin prodigy, she joins the ranks of
Anne-Sophie Mutter of Germany, Yehudi Menuhin of Israel, and Ossip
Gabrilowitsch of Russia. No one knows whether prodigies are born or created.
Subjects:  Gifted children - Analysis
 Violinists -Bigraphy
People:  Chang, Sarah - Biography
Magazine Collection:  73H4596
Electronic Collection:  A15137041
RN:  A15137041
Full Text COPYRIGHT Hearst Corporation 1994
From the days of Yehudi Menuhin to these of Sarah Chang, the sight and sound
of a child playing the violin with the skill of an adult professional have
moved audiences to rapture. Why? And are these geniuses born or made?
WHEN I was eight years old, visiting my mother's hometown in Hungary, a
cousin took me to a seedy shoe-repair shop that also served as the cobbler's
living room and kitchen. There, standing in front of me, holding a small
violin, was an anemic-looking boy practicing Mendelssohn's violin concerto.
The thrilling sound of an incredibly mellow tone, which he produced by
barely touching the strings with his short bow, alternating with bursts of
passionate passages, has stayed with me to this day. How astonishing, I
remember thinking: a kid about my age who could play with all the skill of
an adult!
As powerful (and enduring) as the effect of that experience was, I never
thought to investigate the subject of prodigies until recently. I was
practicing my well-developed button-switching technique on the TV and
chanced on a charming little girl of perhaps 12 playing the violin. Her name
was Sarah Chang, and her music making impressed me so much that I wanted to
find out everything about her. I promptly called my great friend Janos
Starker, the preeminent cellist and teacher, totellhim aboutyung
musical phenomenon. By coincidence he had also seen the program and
concurred, mumbling, "Yes, she seems to be the real thing." (In his
language, that equals unbounded acclaim.)
Sarah Chang, I discovered, lives in New York. Her musician parents emigrated
from South Korea in 1979, and shestudieswith Dorothy DeLy,renowned
violin teacher, at the Juilliard School of Music. The more I learned, the
more fascinated I became, not only with Chang but with her kind--the great
musical prodigies. Are they born musicians or are they made? What is the
price of becoming a prodigy? I recalled the words of music critic Bernard
Holland of The New York Times: "Promoting, encouraging and marketing child
prodigies may not constitute child abuse, but it is a form of robbery,
depriving children of their childhood."
To avoid being overwhelmed by the subject, I decided to investigate only the
mystery of the prodigy performing on four strings, which--no matter how you
look at it--takes a certain amount of guts. For one thing, prodigies are
easy to write off as the equivalent of trained seals. Until one hears, as
Starker says, the real thing, a child performing at the level of an
acclaimed grown-up professional--which, I suppose, is as good a definition
of a prodigy as any-can be viewed as an unnatural occurrence, one that
brings out an ambivalent mixture of wonder tinged with skepticism, not
unlike the feeling we get watching a magician's act. Even Leopold Auer, one
of this century's most eminent violin teachers, remarked nervously whil
listening to the child Jascha Heifetz playing Paganini's Moto Perpetuo: "He
doesn't realize that it cannot be played this fast!"
Everybody recognizes that violin prodigies have come in distinct waves from
distinct localities. Most of the great violinists of the last half of the
19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries originated in Russia and
eanEurop. Just think f thefuture stas whoere trained in Lepold
Auer's class at the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music alone: Efrem
Zimbalist, Nathan Milstein, Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Toscha Seidel.
Today, with Midori, Kyung-Wha Chung, Cho-Liang Lin, Young-Uck Kim and dozens
of their ilk, the breeding ground seems to be Asia. I asked Isaac Stern, one
of the world's greatest violinists, the reasons for this phenomenon.
"The reasons are very clear" he responded. "The violinists in the older
group were all Jews, and Jews at the time were not allowed in any of th
intellectual/professional fields in Russia and eastern Europe. But as
performers on a concert stage, the supertalented young Jewish boys became an
exception. They were allowed to excel."
It is hard to accept that repression fostered musical geniuses, but, says
Josef Gingold, the legendary octogenarian violin teacher at Indiana
University's music school, "When Anton Rubinstein founded the St. Petersbur
Conservatory of Music in 1862, every musician was under the protection of
the czarina. There was an expression, svoboda, meaning ~free artist,' that
meant that a conservatory artist/student could travel freely outside of the
Pale of Settlements, regions where Jews were permitted to live. Any Jew who
was caught after 6 P.M. by the czar's police and didn't have a
laissez-passer or a document indicating that he was a student of Leopold
Auer's at the conservatory was arrested. As a result, every mother stuck a
violin under the chin of her child the minute the little chin could hold the
instrument. It was every parent's dream to have a child in the conservatory,
because it was a passport to the free world."
Another ingredient in the emergence of prodigies is a society that values
excellence in a certain field and is both able to foster talent and measure
it. When the revivalist movement known as Hasidism swept the Jewish
communities of Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary during the 18th and
19th centuries, it brought joy to the austere lives of persecuted Jews, who
learned to sing and dance in the synagogues and to express their love of God
with gaiety and music. These boundless energies were also channeled into the
playing of the violin. Hasidism thus indirectly encouraged violin prodigies,
many of whom became associated with the technique known as the vibrato. This
sound, produced by the oscillation of the left hand and fingertips, was
unabashedly emotional and revolutionized violin-tone production.
Nowadays, the most nurturing societies seem to be in the Far East. "In
Japan, which is a most competitive society with much stronger discipline
than ours," says Isaac Stern, "the children are ready to test their limits
every day. Also in Japan, music was always an accompaniment to the spoken
word or dance, so music was in everyone's blood, so to speak. And when their
cultural borders opened after World War 11, a torrent of Western music
saturated Japan, and that music became part of their daily lives, a
situation not unlike that of Vienna in the 18th and 19th centuries." Much
the same equation holds true for Koreans, who are proud of the fact that
they are even more goal-oriented than the Japanese.
But culture and social context alone cannot explain the emergence of any
individual prodigy. The inexplicable puzzle of genes plays a primary role as
well: J.S. Bach for instance, was the culmination of several generations of
musicians, and four of his sons had significant careers in music. Is it
possible to breed musical geniuses? I asked my friend, amateur violinist
Gerald Edelman, who incidentally also received a Nobel Prize in physiology
in 1972 and who has recently been trying to solve the mysteries of the
brain.
"Forget about it, George," he replied. "You can breed racehorses, but they
don't have language." He also told the following story:
"My violin teacher was a classmate of Milstein's in Russia, and one night
after a Heifetz recital at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York, Milstein turned
to my teacher and said: ~Albert, how does he do it?'
~It's very simple, Nathan,' answered my teacher. ~He has a genetic defect he
got from his father and mother.'
Nathan said: ~Yeah, what is it?'
~Well, it turns out that everything he plays comes out sounding noble. That
s the defect, and the defect is for us to enjoy!'"
Aside from their genetic contributions, parents play a critical role in the
development of a prodigy. The parents of Yehudi Menuhin, the ubiquitous
prototype of the violin prodigy, were too poor to afford a baby-sitter, so
they had to take little Yehudi to concerts with them. When he was three, he
was given a toy violin but was so annoyed that it did not play in tune that
his parents bought him a real one--and the rest is history.
Stories about prodigy-producing parents are endless, and one of the best was
told to me by the late Sol Hurok, the P.T. Barnum of the concert world,
about a young couple who brought him a tape and tried to convince him to add
their eight-year-old son to his roster of famed concert artists. "So I asked
them what the child played on the tape, to which the mother said brightly:
Oh, Mr. Hurok, it's Menuhin who is playing on the tape, but our little son
plays just like him.'"
The parents' role in the success or failure of each child prodigy can vary
from intelligent commitment all the way to pathological obsession. I heard
an amusing illustration of the latter from Janos Starker, who said that his
mother used to make sandwiches and cut them into tiny pieces, and place them
next to his music stand so that little Jancsi wouldn't have an excuse to get
up from practice. "She also bought a parakeet," he recalled with a smile he
reserves for fond memories, "and taught the bird to say just one phrase:
~Jancsi, gyakorlj; Jancsi, gyakorlj--practice, Johnny; practice, Johnny.'"
Based on the results, I guess the method should be patented.
Considrably less amuig is the storyRuth Slezynska, a Califrni
youngster who made her piano debut in 1929 at age four. Four years later,
following her New York concert debut, The New York Times' critic described
her as "something nature has produced in one of her most bounteous moods."
No one realized at the time, however, how she acquired her skill until she
wrote her memoirs. "The reason people were startled at what I could do at
the piano was quite simple. Father was making me practice nine hours a
day....No mistake ever went unpunished. The minute I missed a note I got a
whack across my cheek. If the mistake was bad enough, I was almost hurled
bodily from the piano." By age 15 a breakdown had suspended her career (not
uncommon in the life of prodigies).
Harold Schonberg, former senior music critic of The New York Times, who has
shaped the musical world for many decades, adds a warning: "A by-product of
being a child prodigy is often a one-sided attitude toward life. Prodigies.
especially musical prodigies, start honing their gifts as little more than
babies--sometimes as babies--and devote the rest of their lives to a
ferocious discipline to the exclusion of almost everything else. The result
can be a warped childhood, monomania and the lack of general education."
A few violin prodigies have developed into successful adult artists, but for
each Midori, Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg or Anne-Sophie Mutter
there are dozens who disappear from the concert stage. At Menuhin s Berlin
debut, where he appeared with Bruno Walter in a program of concertos by
Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, the police kept a mob at bay in the streets
while the audience inside the auditorium gave him a forty-five-minute
ovation. But by age 19 he had temporarily retired from the concert stage.
Never having learned a conscious craftsmanship of the instrument from any of
his teachers, he was overwhelmingly intuitive about his playing. "He had
played the violin as instinctively as a bird sings" Winthrop Sargeant
reported in his 1955 New Yorker profile. But Menuhin "didn't... know
precisely why at certain times it was necessary to alter the pressure of his
bow with the little finger of his right hand"--much less how he accomplished
the deadly accurate double stops. In fact, Sargeant concluded, Menuhin's
problem was a singular lack of normal development as a person. Even
searching for the answers in India in yoga did not bring back the magic of
his early youth.
Few prodigies have happy memories of their childhood, and one of the most
distinguished conductors of our time, Lorin Maazel, is no exception. He made
his debut with a symphony orchestra at age nine, at the 1939 New York
World's Fair; by age 11 he had already conducted most major U.S. symphony
orchestras. "I guess I was the Shirley Temple of conductors," he commented
during a recent conversation. Like many other former prodigies I talked
with, he is rather hitter about his early life: "Most of the time the
relationship of the performing prodigies with their parents, teachers and
managers reminds me of young circus performers: On occasion they get a
special diet to prevent them from growing up to full-size adults. I usually
avoid discussing the subject because most journalists demand: ~Show us your
scars.'"
To avoid those scars, says Itzhak Perlman, a prodigy who not only survived
the daunting process but became the present-day successor to Heifetz's
golden mantle, the prodigy must have a teacher oho is as sensitive as he is
expert. "A teacher is extremely important especially in sustaining the young
child's commitment. Naturally, a teacher alone cannot shape a child's life.
While the teacher may say, ~He shouldn't really be playing concerts yet; he
should continue to he a child in school' you have parents who push,
unfortunately, and you have managements that push. So perhaps the most
important role a teacher has is to hold the child back a little bit. It's
very difficult to emerge into adulthood knowing that you have done
everything as a kid. There is nothing to look forward to."
Being a great teacher of prodigies often demands extraordinary talents.
Former prodigy Gary Grafman, director of the Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia told me a delicious little vignette about his first encounter
with a renowned teacher. "One day I was taken to play for the great Leopold
Godowsky, a teacher of many famous prodigies. He asked how old I was, and my
mother answered ~six.' This made me mad because it was the day after my
birthday and I considered myself seven, so I refused to sit down at the
piano. Godowsky winked at my mother and said, ~Don't worry. I have no
problem with kids,' and approached me with a friendly smile. I kicked him in
the stomach with such force that he fell over. And then I went and played
the piano." When I heard this story I recalled a cynical line uttered by a
Hungarian critic: What is worse than a prodigy? Answer: Two prodigies.
Why have only a few teachers produced all the great prodigies? Isaac
Stern--as usual-has the answer: "One great pupil! One really great prodigy
made all the parents want to take their children to that teacher."
It was with trepidation that I went to room 530 at the Juilliard School of
Music to visit Dorothy DeLay. It's awesome to think of the many prodigies
she has taught: Midori, Nigel Kennedy, Shlomo Mintz, Najda
Salerno-Sonnenberg, Cho-Liang Lin, Kyoko Takezawa, Itzhak Perlman, Sarah
Chang and many others. Her sunny room contains a piano, a music stand and a
small desk in one corner. Behind the desk in an armchair sits DeLay, who has
the appearance of an ample queen and the amiable manner of a favorite aunt.
I asked her how many kids she grants an audition, and the answer startl
me. "I listen to everyone who wants to play for me." She also has, I learned
subsequently, a well-rosined organization of six assistants who teach almost
200 students, plus a group of graduate students who help with practical
supervision and technical work.
"How much time can you spend with each?" I asked her.
"Well, they have a lesson each week, then they have a scale class with one
of the graduate students and a techniques class in groups of two or three,
in addition to school performances, chamber music, etc. The scale class is
always in front of fellow students because that way they are compelled to
practice."
"How much do these kids practice?"
"They must practice a minimum of five hours a day, but of course they have
the violins in their hands much longer because they must rehearse at least
three hours on top of that. So if they can manage to get it all done, they
will have the violin in their hands from eight to ten--or maybe even
more--hours per day."
I have always felt that great teachers have a relationship with their
students somewhat like psychoanalysts have with their patients. So I asked
DeLay if this kind of transference does exist.
"I think it depends on the family background, and even more on the culture
the students come from. It exists much less in the families of American
children, but certainly in the Asian families, children learn to have
tremendous respect, almost veneration, for the teacher."
Then I took a big breath and the liberty to ask her about Sarah Chang, whose
playing stirred me to begin this intriguing quest.
"Oh, Sarah's a wonderful person who, like any other child her age, still
enjoys slumber parties. Yet, unlike a child, she'll ask me if she can serve
a cup of tea. Her parents are wonderful people; she has been very well
brought up. Her father, Dr. Min Soo Chang, is a violinist, and he was my
.Her mother isa pianist composer,and they both did theirdoctoral
studies in the United States, and Sarah of course was born here."
I mentioned how stunned I was when I heard Sarah play, and DeLay said: "I
agree with you. I have compared her playing with records of other prodigies
and I don't think anything quite like her has ever happened before. But one
never knows what's going to happen in the next ten years. She might decide
she wants to become a professional golfer, or who knows...."
"How old was she when she came to you, and what did she play when she came
in for her audition?" I asked.
"I think she was six, or perhaps five, and she played the Mendelssohn
concerto with real emotional involvement, and I said to myself, ~I have
never seen or heard anything quite like it in my entire life.'"
A few days after my visit with DeLay, I went to Avery Fisher Hall to hear
Chang play the Tchaikovsky violin concerto with the New York Philharmonic.
When the pint-size fiddler entered the stage, she was wearing a pretty
golden-yellow gown. Did she feel 2,738 pairs of eyes riveted on her? One
could not tell as she greeted the audience with a brief bow and proceeded to
tune her violin. While the orchestra played the opening bars of the
concerto, she swayed almost imperceptibly from one leg to another like a
tennis player before service waiting for her entrance.
When the first note came out from the little wooden box made by Guiseppe
Antonio Guarneri (del Gesu), the ninety members of the orchestra suddenly
disappeared, and even Kurt Masur became invisible quite a trick considering
his de Gaulle-like authority. Only the sound was there, the lusty tone
surrounding, caressing and unifying every person in Avery Fisher Hall. The
sight of the rapt audience made me think of faces of groups in certain
medieval paintings, faces that reflect their being moved by an identical
spirit.
Toward the end of the first movement, the orchestra figuratively rolls out a
red carpet for the soloist to enter with the cadenza. This cadenza, the
traditional showcase for soloists, is the equivalent of the floor exercises
at gymnastics competitions.
Chang took up the challenge. I am convinced that every concert performer
must have a killer instinct. Certainly, Chang was ready to slay the dragons
of violinists past and present. Beyond being utterly perfect technically,
she communicated to every person her thinking, using sounds instead of
words. On the last note of the trill on the E-string before the orchestra
returned, time froze inside Avery Fisher--I'm sure that all the watches had
to be reset at the end of the performance.
For the next thirty-three minutes, ethereal harmonies alternated with the
sound of Russian peasants dancing; the solo violin had an excited dialogue
with the orchestra; double stops flew in the air with a pitch so accurate
that they caused physical sensations. At the end of the finale, the entire
hall went wild, giving Chang a spontaneous standing ovation. Masur embraced
her; the string players--in addition to the traditional tapping of the
bow--enthusiastically applauded an admired colleague.
Reading criticisms the morning following a concert often reminds me that one
man's arugula is another man's weed, but this time the opinion of the critic
from the Times coincided with--I venture to say--all who were at the
concert: "No question," he wrote, "Ms. Chang is a phenomenon, despite the
crowded company of violin prodigies these days. Even grizzled musicians
speak of her in awed terms, ~frightening' being the commonest. As with most
prodigies, her technique is stunningly secure, but unlike many of them she
refuses to settle for the merely immaculate."
Long ago, there was a parlor game played by budding musicians in Budapest in
which rivals tried to match the most unlikely parallels and opposites. As I
recall it, the winner one day offered the almost absurd duo of soap bubbles
and prodigies. Both will burst, he explained, if touched carelessly. But, he
added wistfully, prodigies do have a chance to survive the brief magic.
--End--