LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER

Interview with Sarah Chang
Violinist
The New York Philharmonic
with Kurt Masur and Sarah Chang
March 3, 1998
Source

QUESTION:
When did you first start practicing?

SARAH CHANG:
I was 4 when I started the violin and my first concert in public was when I was 5. I started the piano when I was 3. My mother started me off. I actually had a great time on the piano and I kept it up until I was 9 or 10. And then the violin thing got kind of out of hand so I started focusing more on the violin, and I was traveling by that time quite extensively.

QUESTION:
Why were you traveling?

SARAH CHANG:
Because I made my debut in New York with the Philharmonic when I was 8. So after that, things slowly came into place and I started traveling and recording like crazy and having the time of my life. I'm still living it up because I'm having so much fun and still recording a lot. Recording is something that I truly enjoy doing. It's not quite like giving a live performance, of course. I mean there is something about a live audience and a live atmosphere that you really cannot copy, but it's something that I love nevertheless.

QUESTION:
When you started on the piano, were you practicing every day?

SARAH CHANG:
I try to practice the piano every day, even when I was 3. Not a lot, maybe 20 or 30 minutes a day. But even now, when I'm playing the violin or I've just come home from a very long tour and I'm exhausted and I really want to go out and have fun with my friends, I'll pretty much leave the violin alone. Maybe do a scale or two seriously, about 20, 30 minutes a day just to make sure that my hands are still there. But I don't like to stay away from the violin for more than 2 or 3 days.

QUESTION:
When you started out on the violin, were you practicing every day really hard like you do now?

SARAH CHANG:
No, nothing like that. I started when I was 4 and basically practiced 15 to 30 minutes a day. Nothing. I came to Juilliard when I was 6 as a student, and it was truly a hobby even then. I think about the time I was 8 or 9, I started practicing probably 2 or 3 hours a day, broken of course into segments because you can't concentrate that long when you're only 8 or 9. Nowadays I try to do around 4 hours a day if I can fit it in. But that's of course after schoolwork and talking on the phone with friends and whatever I have to do as a teenager. But I try to fit it in, especially when I'm home because practicing is something that I feel the most comfortable doing when I am home.

QUESTION:
What do you do when you practice actually? Are you playing scales?

SARAH CHANG:
My practicing routine has changed over the years. I think now I focus more on basics than I used to. I never neglected them. I was taught never to neglect the basics from vibrato exercises to scales and arpeggios and etudes. And I've always kept that up. And especially now. Nowadays when you're doing concerto after concerto and recital program after recital program, you really need to focus on your basics. So I try to do at least an hour or two a day.

It gives me my security. I mean, of course, I can probably go without them for a year and my hands would probably still be there, but the thing is that when I reach 40 or 50, I don't want to take that chance. So I'd rather keep up the basics now. Make sure that my foundation is set and I know exactly what I'm doing, but I'm not forcing myself to do anything. No tendonitis, no strain, I don't want to worry about that stuff so I just try to make sure that I am very relaxed and I do things the proper way and just have fun. I mean scales—it's silly to say, but scales are great. You spend hours on them sometimes and you get angry at yourself because you're not doing something right but it is the hardest thing in the world to play a great scale, I think, for me.

I think it's easier to play any given concerto and play it with a very virtuoso style and to do it in a slam-bam-firework kind of way which is great. It is fun and as a young person it comes very naturally. But I think to play a very simple scale—a scale in Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, that is the hardest thing. Because it's the simplicity of it. And to go back into the baroque style and do a scale or an arpeggio the way that they used to do it back then, it takes so much effort and so much thinking and dedication just to do that.

QUESTION:
Can you do it mindlessly? Can you practice reading a book or watching TV with the sound off? I understand you can't practice the concerto that way—or can you?

SARAH CHANG:
Oh, yes, you can. There is such a thing as muscle memory, I think. I mean there are times where I probably shouldn't, but I turn on the TV and do my scales. Or even do repertoire. Regular repertoire like concertos or sonatas -- with the volume down of course, because you can't do both at the same time. And it's not good—of course not—but it is possible. And sometimes, in a way maybe, I think it helps even because when you're on stage, not everything is going to go perfectly. I mean I've done concerts when there have been earthquake drills and fire alarms and people collapsing in the audience because somebody had a heart attack. And while all that is going on, you are playing. You are continuously playing. And if you open your eyes and you see somebody or you hear something and something's not right, you need to be able to go on. And I think up to a point, you need to be able to do what you've practiced and prepared for, almost mindlessly. But I think if you're going to practice, if you're going to put the time and the effort into it, then you really should just go into your music room and start practicing. Even if it's not for 2 or 3 hours at a time, even if it's just 30 minutes, you should just do it and make sure that your time is well spent.

QUESTION:
You're suggesting you need a basis of a kind of automatic pilot.

SARAH CHANG:
Well, you go on stage and realistically, everything should be there. No matter what happens in front of you and behind you, you should be able to do your thing and do it well. The inspiration that comes to you once your foot is on the stage, that is something that you cannot describe in words. The beauty of playing a live concert is that adrenaline that you get from the audience and you project back to them. As for putting your mind on auto pilot, there are times when you go on stage and you're not 100 percent there. Sometimes you're on tour and you just got off a plane and you're jet lagged. Or you had a fight with somebody. I mean, it's life and you need to go out there in front of 3,000 people and do your best anyway. And those people don't know what you went through that morning. So basically you have to go out, give your best and hope that it works out. And usually if you are strong enough to do it, and if you've prepared yourself for it, usually it works out.

So much of this—performing and being on stage and being a performer—is mental. A lot of it is up here in the head. And up to a point you can do all the practicing you want and rehearse all you need to do, but the thing is that if your mind's not on it, it's not going to work anyway. My parents try to tell me all the time, "you're fine, you're fine," even when I've had basically 2 days to prepare for a concert they say "Hey, you've learned it since you were 6 years old. You know this thing, don't worry about it." And if somebody that you trust says that to you 2 seconds before you go out there, that gives you such confidence. And it gives you an incredible rush. It builds the night, and you build onto that and it's just beautiful.

QUESTION:
But if you hadn't done the ground work, suppose you went out depending just on your inspiration?

SARAH CHANG:
Oh [laughs]. I could get away with it maybe. Maybe. But I would know. The musicians that I'm working with, they will definitely know. And depending on who's out there, if it's my manager or my record producer, they would know definitely.

If you are a musician and you have some kind of knowledge up to a certain level, you know when you're listening to a concert and the person's heart is not there, you sense it immediately. Which is why it's so important to book your concerts in a certain pattern, and to make sure that you're not going to be overly tired and prepare yourself. If you know that you're going to be out there and you've been on a plane the entire day, and you've had no time to practice, I will probably be lying in my dressing room just sleeping. 10 minutes before the concert, my mom usually comes and knocks—she's like, "Are you still sleeping? You can't be sleeping, you're going out there in 10 minutes." But it freshens you up, and if you're mentally ready for it, then what you do out there is just going to be a part of that.

QUESTION:
How do you know when you know it well enough? You've practiced a new concerto, how do you know that you know it well enough to perform?

SARAH CHANG:
Well, it's no secret that when you've learned a concerto when you're 5 or 6, it's much easier later on. If you've learned it when you were very young, it's very comfortable. There are concertos that I'm learning now and performing now, and it's different. It's different because the level of musicality that I'm playing at now is of course different than I was 6. And I like to think that maybe it's a bit deeper, and I'm thinking a bit more about the music. But it's different. I go and toy with what I call "jet lag concertos." Another Mendelssohn or the Bruck or the Tchaikovsky. Seriously, you could do those in your sleep. Once you've played those, up to a point, you just pick it up and start playing it—it's very comfortable. But something like the Sibelius is not like that. Sibelius is definitely not like that. It is one of the most intense concertos out there for the violin repertoire, and you need to give 110 percent for that concerto every single night you play it.

QUESTION:
I'm assuming you're learning a piece, a sonata or something, there's a passage in it that is probably easy for you, but for somebody with normal fingers, it would be hard. How do you know when you know it well enough? Obviously you need to play it a few times...

SARAH CHANG:
You need to play of course, but you feel it. You feel it in your gut. Sometimes when something's not going as well as you really would like it to, I found out that it's much more effective to put it away and do something else and go back to it later because once you have a mind block and you go through that process and you cringe, you just cringe, it's not going to work if you're in that kind of mindset. So I usually just put it away, it's okay, I can go back to it tomorrow or next week, or it's fine, just put it away. And then later when you've kind forgotten about it, you go back to it and more likely than not it will come to you. Gradually it will come back to you.

QUESTION:
Can you say there's a point where you say "I really know this."?

SARAH CHANG:
I think it's gradual, and there's a point when you think you know a piece really well. I've gone through this many many times, when you do a concerto and you performed it a few times and you think "Hey, I know this. I can do this and I can even record this next week if I want to." And then you play the same concerto with a different orchestra or a different conductor who completely throws it down and you have to start from square one again and you think, "What was I thinking? I don't know what I was thinking." I mean, there are some recordings that I've made when I was 11 or 12 and I was perfectly happy with them back then. And of course the very next day, once you've recorded, you wish you could go back to the studio and do this one thing and you know you could do it better, but that's why you do re-recordings. I'm only 17 and I've got a lot of time, so I can pace myself and do the repertoire that I'm truly comfortable with right now.

QUESTION:
There's a whole thing about Sibelius being a bit of a nut. Is that true, do you know anything about that?

SARAH CHANG:
I've read a lot about Sibelius and there are people who say that he always had a very dark scowl on his face because he never smiled. I had this very interesting experience when I was about 13. I went to Finland and it was dead in the middle of winter. It was freezing cold. There was so much snow and I went to Anola, which is Sibelius' house. It was completely isolated—just snow and forest, trees and the lake, completely beautiful but very quiet. And very serene. And I thought, well, this is where he was composing his stuff. And his great symphonies and the violin concerto, this is where it basically came from.

I also got this little handbook about Anola and there's a part that says that Sibelius wouldn't allow running water in his house because it disturbed him and his thought processes. So his daughters had to go out to the well which was half a mile away and then bring back water. So I thought, "Wow!" This person was really that much into control and silence. So you go and look at the concerto after that and the way it starts in the beginning: very shimmery. Very beautiful. But in a way it is isolated, and you feel kind of lonely when you're playing that. And gradually of course it builds up into this great big climax when every single orchestra-like instrument known to mankind is clashing and you're trying to break out there and you're trying to play your heart out. But really it did help me realize what he is like.

QUESTION:
Do you see any kind of high and low in his personality in the music? Do you see that he might have been sort of manic at one point and depressed at another?

SARAH CHANG:
Actually some of his music is depressing. Some of it is very cold and isolated. But at other times, it's very romantic, very warm, very lush. I remember being in Berlin and I was recording the concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic. Up until then I had played the beginning of the second movement. The entire section is on the G string, and I was used to just playing my little heart out with big vibrato and full, big sound. And then at the rehearsal the clarinets, they started the second movement and they were just so simple, so beautiful but not overly bravura. And I thought, maybe that's the way it should be.

We did that concert that night and it was one of the most serene, beautiful things. It was that much stronger, I think, just because we were not playing out, but we were playing for ourselves. And there's an inner strength in that I think.

QUESTION:
What do you do when you run up against a passage that you think, "This is not serene. This is depressed. Or this is maniacal. A crazy man wrote this."

SARAH CHANG:
The entire first page of the third movement is crazy. It is. I mean Sibelius basically just put everything technically known to mankind and just threw it on that first page. There's so much range. There are thirds and arpeggios and scales and there's this great rhythm going on underneath the orchestra all throughout. I don't particularly think of him as crazy, I just think that it is extremely exciting. I also think that it's very interesting that from the beginning to the end of the third movement is the exact same tempo. The piece never slackens. And the rhythm is always there. It's very controlled rhythm, very controlled pace. But it never slows down -- it's just very strict, very military.

QUESTION:
You never had to put yourself in a depressed state of mind to play it?

SARAH CHANG:
Well depressed enough. I mean, why bother trying to make it even more depressing? But music can bring you down. I mean, it would be beautiful if everything that you did musically was happy and bright and light and all that stuff, but it's not. Some concertos, some passages are very low key and very depressed. And it comes to you, especially with a full orchestra behind you.

And if you have a great conductor like Maestro Masur and he just sets the mood. You just look at his face, you look at him. He's over here when I play with him and he just sets the mood. And you know exactly what to do. He doesn't have to say a single word to you because you know what he wants.

QUESTION:
When you talk about learning the Sibelius say, when you were 6, is that realistic? I mean, did you actually learn it when you were 6?

SARAH CHANG:
I think nowadays it's very realistic. There was a time when the Tchaikovsky was declared unplayable, even for adults. And nowadays, everybody is doing it. I learned it when I was 7 and there are kids even younger now just learning it. They can do the notes, of course. Anybody can do the notes. I think what comes after musically and emotionally, and once you put it together with an orchestra, I think that's when the audience gets to see who is just playing the notes and who is actually giving their all and giving their heartfelt interpretation into the music.

QUESTION:
But most people struggle with just getting the notes, isn't that true?

SARAH CHANG:
I guess a lot of people do struggle. I don't think it's just a matter of technical security. I think if you have your basics and if you have the capability of doing it, if you work on it long enough and you have the right guidance, from a teacher or a parent or just a mentor you know, I think of course it does help.

QUESTION:
Some people just can't do it. Why aren't you a great tennis player?

SARAH CHANG:
Oh, because I haven't given it my all. Definitely. I mean I started tennis for fun and because my brother is so good at it and he's only 10. We started taking lessons together and then gradually, I started traveling more and I was away for a month and I wouldn't play tennis, and then I'd go back and my brother is so good, he won't play with me anymore. He says, "Oh, you don't play anymore. I'm not playing with you." But I think that's right because he loves doing it. He honestly has a love for it. He goes to the courts 4 times a week. And it's the same thing with me and the violin. I practice every day and if you have a genuine love for something and you put your mind to it, I think you can do it up to a certain level.

I'm not saying that I was always 100 percent into practicing. I mean I always loved playing. I mean even when I was 5, once I got on that stage, I loved performing. That has never changed. But I'm a human being. There are days when you don't want to practice, when you want to go out to the movies with your friends and go shopping and all that great stuff. One of the things I have learned is that if you're going to spend the time and if you are going to practice, it doesn't have to be for a long time. Just put your mind to it. There are days when I just do scales. My mind's not on it, not completely. Then I put the violin down. I'll go watch TV, I'll go on the Internet, I'll do whatever. And then probably that night I'll get a solid hour of good practicing done.

QUESTION:
You could say that your 10 year old brother has a very good chance to be a major tennis player because of his name.

SARAH CHANG:
Now this is very funny because my brother's name is Michael Chang, I go in for interviews or just talk to people and they say, "So what does your brother do?" I say he plays tennis and they automatically assume that he is Michael Chang, the tennis player, and I don't say anything. I let them think what they want because to tell them that my brother is only 10 and he's a kid, why ruin that image, you know? But my brother is in fourth grade, and he is the cutest kid. We get along very well, I think maybe because of the huge age difference between us—we've got about 7 years—and also the fact that I don't see him every day which, in some ways is very sad but it keeps us on good relations.

QUESTION:
But you're saying he practices tennis in a way that you don't because he really loves it?

SARAH CHANG:
That's right. Well, for him, he's only 10 so obviously he doesn't know exactly what he wants yet. Kind of like me. Everybody thought that I knew what I wanted when I was 10. I didn't. I had no idea, and I'm still kind of searching. But I think for him—basically if he loves tennis, he wants to play. He wants to go to the courts. And if Mom doesn't want to drive or she's tired or whatever, he'll go out on the basement door and he's got a whole basket full of tennis balls and he'll just start hitting against the garage door. And then it will drive me nuts because I'm trying to practice upstairs, but he loves it. He loves it that much and all he wants to do is play tennis. He talks to me all the time. He says, "Can you come to the courts with me today? Can you just help me serve?"

QUESTION:
Is it the same kind of involvement in what he's doing that you had with the violin?

SARAH CHANG:
Oh, yeah, there are times when he goes to the courts and for a solid hour, he'll do nothing but serve. Kind of like me just picking a certain phrase and just working with it for an hour. The same exact thing. Probably for him it's more physically tiring because he has to use his whole body for tennis.

QUESTION:
Did you find you could do things a lot more quickly than other people could?

SARAH CHANG:
That never occurs to you, especially when you're young. And people tell you that, "you're so talented" or "you're so quick. You learn stuff so fast." And my teachers told me, "If I tell you something, by the next lesson, it's completely absorbed and it sounds like your own thing." Which is good up to a point but I've had very good parents who've helped me keep my feet grounded and not to get a big head, because that's very easy in this business when critic after critic is praising you and you get all these rave reviews. You know when you walk off the stage that night, and if you're not 100 percent happy, it doesn't matter what everybody else tells you. You know that you're not happy and you'll work harder for the next night.

QUESTION:
What would you tell a kid who didn't want to practice? You must have been through this at some point.

SARAH CHANG:
I don't like the idea of pushing a person to practice. I really don't think that's the way to do it. Of course I don't know that much about it. I'm only 17. But one thing that I've always credited my parents for is that they never ever pushed me to practice.

They didn't have to. I think if they had, I think if they had taken away my TV or my Nintendo and locked me a room and said "Practice!" I would have hated it. Who wouldn't? I would have hated it. And I don't think I would love performing as much. The thing is that both of them are musicians and they know exactly how hard this field is and, if anything, when I started the violin and when I started to travel, my mom said, "Do you really want to do this?" I remember, she said, "The day that this stops being fun for you, just let me know." And I thought that was just really sweet. If somebody pushes you to a point where you don't want to do it, you'll react by turning away from it, I don't think that's doing anybody any good.

My brother also plays the cello a little bit. There are days when he has the bow, and he puts a yo-yo in it and he goes fishing with the bow. So he's obviously not as dedicated to that as I am to the violin. But it's fine, because if he does like music—and he obviously does—he'll start practicing, he'll start playing. And he'll find something he likes.

QUESTION:
I've always thought that Hanon is one of the great Germanic jokes of all time. I mean the theory is that if you can play any pattern at any speed, you can play anything, right? Why doesn't that work?

SARAH CHANG:
I think because music is so much more than great fingers. You have to be talented, of course, and you have to have some kind of gift musically to be able to do that, but I think after the fingers are there, nobody can teach you how to play musically. I've had some incredible teachers, and they have given me so much, but musically what I have learned is basically from experience, from being on stage, playing with the greatest orchestras and figuring it out for myself. That's when you slowly start to realize that there is a whole different level of music, and you're just peeking in the door because it's just a huge room and you need to learn it on your own. You're completely on your own from there. And I think the audience knows when they're just listening to notes and when they're truly listening to music.