Announcer and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Conductor and violin producer Itzkah Perlman. He tried to build bridges to people and idologies. He has four emmys and 16 grammys and counting. Currently on a world tour and his latest cd is called eternal echos which in part celebrates jewish culture through music. Lets take a look. This is our 11th season. Ive waited a long time for this. Im honored. My pleasure. To finally have you on this set. My pleasure. Good to see you. Thank you. Another world tour. You arent tired of this yet . Yes, i am. [ laughter ]. Everything but the travel is nice. The travel is getting worse, you know, its not getting better. I was saying the other day to somebody i remember leaving one hour before a flight from the house and just getting to the airport and getting on the plane, finished. You leave one hour, you miss the flight. So, any way. Yeah. You, you know, its one of those things you have to just take it with the rest of it. Yes. I want to get personal with you, and if im pushing too hard, you tell me and ill back up. I didnt know how i was going to get into this. What you said now gives me a wonderful opening. I complain all the time as one who has to travel too much. To your point, i complain because travel is getting so much worse. I was on a flight the other day for like eight hours and didnt serve you anything on a flight that long. Peanuts sometimes. Exactly. But then the delays. Its horrific. But how else do you get if you dont hop on a plane, so we have to deal with it. But what hit me literally in my spirit when you said that you love everything except the travel is that here i am completely abled bodied, im abled bodied and i complain all the time. You have to walk with crutches or use your Little Machine to get around. Yes, yes. And im almost i almost feel convicted that im complaining what i have to go through and you have to deal with that stuff. I cannot go through the xray machine, so they basically they give me the personal treatment. Yeah. That said, do you mind if they said, were now going with the back of my mind, im going to touch your behind. Yeah. I always wonder, how does the back of the hand able to grab you, you know, you have a funny kind of hand that goes like that. Yeah. Exactly. Any way, its one of the things i dont know you know, my wife looks at me and says, i dont know how you do that. You have to do it, because if you start complaining, youll miss the flight. Go ahead, check me, so on. The leg braces and all of that stuff. For me, its more unpleasant actually. Tell me why you never made excuses, why you were never bitter when you come to this country, you have a handicap. You cant speak english. So thats a double handicap, i suspect. Yeah. And somehow you were never em bittered by it. Gone on to be one of the greatest in the world. The thing is, everyone is saying, youre so heroic. Look, i had polio when i was 4. So when youre 4 years old, you know, you get used to things very, very quickly. And it wasnt like, you know, if you were 20 or 25 or something and then something happens. Thats more difficult. So i mean it had to do with my parents. They felt that this was not one of those things to stop me from practicing my violin. You know. It just has nothing to do. Its separate from i always say, separate your abilities from your disabilities. Something if i could play the violin, i dont have to play it standing up. I can play it sitting down. I never thought about it. All i thought was to do the bestky. If im talented, good. You know, i wasnt going to play the violin if i couldnt. I take your point at 4 years old age, because this is the way base clu youre formed as a child. Yeah. You get used to it. I get that. I get that at 4, 24, 54, you can be asking god a lot of questions about why me. No. No. You know, im really im never bitter. When i look im a great sports fan. I love to watch tennis and basketball and baseball and so on. And i never say to myself, gee, i wish i could do that. It never occurs to me. The thing is that i will always consider myself lucky that i can actually cry listening to some music. I think, oh my god, i am its amazing. I wonder if anybody else can feel when you listen to a phrase and the tears start to come. That makes me special because i can actually react to Something Like that. Thats what i think about. Im just curious now. Im out on a limb now, not the first time, wont be the last, but i wonder if theres any parallel or parallels in your mind between what you see when you watch the artistry of sport and the artistry of music . Well, yes, absolutely. What is the parallel . Well, several. First there is, if you want to call it energy uhhuh. When you see a person, whether its basketball player or baseball player or a tennis player, the kind of energy that they have, you know, whatever it is, whether you hit the ball or whether you, you know, throw the ball or whatever it is that you do, i find another thing is the shall we say, when you watch michael jordan, for example, you see a ballet dancer. Again, thats something that can be a very musical thing and so on. In music, its energy. Its a lot of it is energy. A lot of it is what you are actually hearing in your ear and then trying to get it into the playing. A lot of the stuff in music, for example, has to do with some people feel very private when they play. They say, what i feel, i dont want you to know. Thats my business. Well, in performance, if you feel something and you can actually express it to the audience, thats very, very good. Now, i dont know how that parallels into sports. I know that, for example, when you think about what makes for a great baseball hitter, for example, is i suppose the ability to see the ball go very, very slowly from the pitchers hand, you know. Uhhuh. Not to get like that. And so while i suppose a parallel like that could be when you perform a piece that particularly difficult to see to actually hear in advance what its going to sound like, so that you can actually not be surprised. And, you know, im now involved, of course, in teaching and so on and i see a lot of kids, sometimes playing. The difference between somebody who plays who has a bit more experience is how in advance they can hear what theyre about to do as opposed to, you know, some kids came to me and said, i was so nervous and everything just came too fast for me and i wasnt ready. And so i guess there is a parallel being ready for something. Yeah. I was thinking as you were talking about say golf, for example. Golf is one of any number of sports i can use as an example of this. But certainly in golf, for those who play, its not about how hard you strike the ball necessarily. Its about your form. And im thinking about, yourp form is so the form of what you do is so important. Yeah the form is good. But in golf, i think its very interesting that as you get older, the challenges not so much how far you can hit the ball. Its the putting. And for me, thats amazing. You know, if you just why cant you do it like that . Yeah. But yet thats what goes, at least im told that. Maybe im wrong, thats what i was told, that putting is the first thing to go, rather than the actual hitting. You can still hit the ball. The drive, yeah. Maybe its the same thing with violin playing, for example. Its the fine motor things, you know. Its making the melody really work perfectly that maybe thats the challenge. So, if in golf putting is the first thing to go, when you play the violin for 50plus years, as you have, what tends to be the first thing to go . I wouldnt know. Yeah. [ laughter ]. I love that. I love that. He said i wouldnt know. I love that. Im the wrong guy to ask that question of. That was funny. You gave it to me. I was prepared for it. See, i knew in advance what i was going to say. See that. You watched the ball come very slowly and you put it very slowly. And you put it over the fence. It was right there. Okay. What are you afraid might happen first as you continue to play this instrument . Well, no, i dont know. Everybody is different, seriously. Everybody has develops differently. Everybody ages differently. I could give you a couple of fiddle players that played into their 80s and they were absolutely fantastic, i mean, really great. And then i cld tell you somebody who was like 60 and was finished. Then i knew one of the great fiddle players retired at the age of 62. He felt something was going to happen. Didnt want it to develop and said, okay, im retiring and thats it. Stopped. So one of the great challenges is to know when things are not right. That was my next question. How will you know so you are not i suspect you wont be, but how will you know that so that you are not one of those persons in that first category, where people say, itzkah probably should have put the thing down ten years ago. Exactly. First of all, when you play, youre the first one to feel how effortless or the other way it is. In other words, if its effortless or is it getting more difficult . But then the most important thing is to have somebody that is actually truthful with you to tell you whats going on. Thats one of the great challenges in music, especially in instrumental playing, you know, not in singing. Because singers have coaches. But also, if you listen to a recording, i mean, how truthful are you with what youre listening to . Do you say, oh, this is wonderful. Or are you saying, this is time to quit. So for me, thats a challenge. You know, i mean and i would hope that when the time comes with me, you know, that i would recognize it and say thank you so up. Im finished. Im laughing on the inside. Youre right. Its good to have somebody you can trust to tell you the truth. But when your Itzkah Perlman, who dares to tell you. My wife. My wife will never, ever when something is not so she tells me. The thing is that she knows that i can take it. As a matter of fact, i ask her, i look at her after a concert, i look at her face and i know if i played well if it was okay. The thing is that what you try to do when you play is you try to play not below a certain level. In other words, it can be a special day where it would be phenomenal. But if its not below a certain level, thats the goal. Yeah. Thats what you want to do. Thats why you practice and so on. In each of our lives i suspect it is the case that while i know it is the case whether we acknowledge it, admit it or not, we all want to be loved, respected, acknowledged, affirmed, paid attention to every now and again for something that we attempt to. I think thats human. In introducing you, i ran a lot of listed a lot of our accolades, honors, awards youve received over the years. Are the things that have truly meant something to you that speak to what youve been able to accomplish . Set your humility aside for a second. Its one thing for me to say this that or another. Playing at president ial inauguratio inaugurations. That was great. Im sure it was. That was amazing. What does Itzkah Perlman say about those honors and accolades and what really has meant the most to you . Well, look, honors are really wonderful. Right. You know, i love people are looking at you and saying, youve really accomplished something and so on and so forth. But thats one thing. The other thing is that youve got to be able to say to yourself, i am really out tre doing the best that i can and im doing it well. You know, if i dont feel that im doing it well, all the honors dont mean anything, you know, youre wondful. I said, then why do i feel that im not operating at my top level and so on . So for me, honors is very, very nice. But i still feel that the challenge of anything my age, you know, cant believe im saying my age, is not to be bored by what i do. And you see, thats the thing. Because after a while ive done how many times have i played the violin concerto . And yet i just played it yesterday, you know. And i felt new things in it and i said, thats great. Thats absolutely great because otherwise you play i always say the same thing and i tell it to my students. Dont play the way it goes. Play the way it is, you know. And the way it is every time you play it, its slightly different. Look for something. So thats the challenge. Not to be bored. Speaking of your students, i wrote this down and want to get it right and want to read a quote that you said. I think i get it but i want you to sort of unpack it for me. Before i do that though, your comment about the honors are nice but what really matters is what you think of your work. I think of a quote from frank sana tra that once said, never let anybody tell you he was talking about his Recording Studios experiences. Never let anybody tell you that something is good when you know it can be better. Its nice to hear that you think its good, but you have to not forget that you can do it better. Thats absolutely true. So this quote i wrote down that i want to get you town pack for me, speaking of your students, its a quote from you. You can play the music. Now you have to speak the music. Right. You can play the music. Yes. Now you have to speak the music. Uhhuh. Unpack that for me. Well, playing involves mechanical things, you know. What sounds good. Especially violinists. Its a pain in the neck to play the violin. So many somethings can go wrong, you know, intonation. For example, if you put your hand on the piano and you play a note, its in tune. The bow, where do you put the bow . Put it a certain way it sounds better than a certain other way. Theres a lot of mechanical things. After a certain point, when somebody knows a piece, i said to them, okay, its finished now. Youre trying to play the violin is now finished. You know how to do it. Now you have to really listen to the music and to express what it is. Uhhuh. And what i do, which is i find is kind of for me i think it works very well. I take a book. I open any book, you know, whether its a magazine or anything like that, and i open to a photograph. Lets say the photograph will say, an amazing thing happened to joe two mornings ago. I said, how would you read that . And they said, an amazing thing happened to joe two mornings ago. You wouldnt read it that way. You would say, an amazing thing happened to joe two mornings ago. So, the word amazing, our youre not just going to say amazing, its going to say amazing. How do you compare it towards playing music . You have harmonies. The the harmonies are amazing, you can play it amazing. You cannot say, thats nice and just play it through. Thats what i was saying about you have to talk it. You have to listen to what youre hearing. You said, this is something very, very special that doesnt just sound major minor. It gives you a question. Question mark, got to it. Another example, like going to a museum and seeing nice paintings and then you see the mona lisa and you just go buy. You cant go buy. Look, oh my god, this is something. Same thing with harmonies. If you see something that har monically is interesting, express it. Thats what im saying about talking to music rather than just playing through. So is that the process that you used when youre working, say, with John Williams on schindlers list and do you need to see the words on the page, the screen play . Do you need to see the film . Whats your process. I just need to hear. I just need to hear. Hear what . Harmonies. Harmonies. Yeah. How do i so another thing that you really do when you play, that youre supposed to do is colors. You cannot play with one color. If you play with one color, again, its like watching a beautiful painting, a drawing. But its all in blue or its all in red. Maybe very nice but not very interesting. So you look for colors. How do you get the colors . You get the colors by reacting to the harmonies. Maybe somebody was not into music would not understand it. I think im pretty clear. You have to react to harmonies. Its like reacting to a vocabulary in a book. You cannot just go and say, blah blah blah blah blah. You got to see a word thats its a special word, like a word like heroic. Youre not just going to say, this is heroic. Im not going to say that. You say, this is heroic. What im saying is very subtle, but its still expressive. Since i mentioned your work with John Williams and mentioned Steven Spielberg and schindlers list. This latest project of yours i mentioned earlier is called eternal echos songs and dances for the soul. I dont want to color this question too much, but speak to me about your appreciation, the value that your culture holds for you. Well, this recording is basically i would call it also call it from my childhood. Growing up in israel, on the radio on saturdays, you know, used to have an hour of concerto music. So a lot of this stuff that is on this recording is stuff that i heard when i was 7, 8, 9 years old. Thats one thing. Another thing, this is about being reactive to a great voice. So this concert i heard him sing and said, oh, this is something. So the voice plus the material of my childhood, i said, ive got to be involved in that. Especially since this is something i grew up with. And its like a part of what you hear. You know, its not like i have to study how stuff goes, you know. Its right in the back of your brain. And its like the same thing, theres some cleanser in there as well. Again, its something from my childhood that came naturally to me. Ive got to record this. Speaking of childhood, in the course of this conversation, which i hate its just about up, i could do this for hours, you referenced by my count, three or four times the teaching that you do with these young people. Why has that been so important for you, the teaching . Well, its like i always say, when you teach others, you teach yourself. Its very, very simple. And ive been teaching many, many years. And this particular you know, we have this program called the Perlman Music Program that my wife started this summer it will be 20 years. And ive been teaching at the jewel ard school as well. Knowing is better for my playing than teaching. Because when you teach, you have to think. And you have to listen what other people do. Then all of a sudden you play yourself and you say, i dont need a teacher, im a teacher. Then you can react immediately. It really improves. I do three things, teaching, conducting and playing. Each one of those sort of helps the other. Yeah. Youve express what had the teaching does for you. Yeah. As an artist. What does the conducting do for you as an artist . Conducting is a form of teaching or maybe you dont have to use the word teaching, you can use the word coaching. Again, it involves listening. It involves musical listening to a phrase. Listening to the way people play the song. That all is connected. So one thing is connected to the other. So, for me, its just basically doing one thing in three different ways. Yeah. I think if there were a moral to this story or take away from this conversation, its this notion of generous listening. Generous listening. And the thing is that as i get older, it gets better. Thats the thing. You know, we always say about, what are they going to lose when you get older. Lets not talk about that. Lets talk about what youll gain. I find i can hear better which is nice. Its very funny. I