THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 16, 1995 TAG: 9503160058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 148 lines
WHEN THE Virginia Symphony plays, the last one to arrive and the first one to leave is concertmaster Vahn Armstrong.
As the ensemble's leading violinist, Armstrong enters the stage by himself to a round of applause, standing while the musicians tune. At the end of the concert, no player may leave until Armstrong rises.
Yet standing and sitting are the least of his duties. The 34-year-old Juilliard School graduate, in his second season with the orchestra, plays solos in symphonies, operas and ballets. He also consults with conductors on string technique and leads the violins by playing with large bow strokes.
This week, Armstrong steps out of the orchestra to play the Violin Concerto No. 2 of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, a colorful, challenging work written in the years just before World War II. It will be concertgoers' first opportunity to get a long look at Armstrong, the most distinguished player to have held this job. It will also be a test of Armstrong's healing left pinky, which he broke in December.
Armstrong spent a decade as second violinist of the respected New World String Quartet. And he studied with Dorothy DeLay, teacher of such soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Robert McDuffie and Gil Shaham. But orchestral work always intrigued him.
``Early on I got interested in the concertmaster thing,'' he said one afternoon at a restaurant near his Norfolk home. ``It really offered a lot of opportunities to do a little bit of everything. It combined the artistic challenges of a solo or chamber music career with a little more financial stability. It's nice to have health insurance and stuff.''
The privileges come with a price: working as a manager. When Armstrong took the job, he was already serving as associate concertmaster at the Chautauqua Institution summer festival in upstate New York. He smiled and said, ``The concertmaster there said to me, `I've got scars all over my back. Get used to it.' ''
Sitting in the concertmaster's seat means more than playing the occasional solo. It is Armstrong who makes sure the first violins' bows go up and down at the same time, and that everyone plays the same way. During performances he'll lean up and forward to let the whole section see his bow.
``You try to inspire confidence,'' he said. ``People should know when to come in. They should be following the conductor. You just want to be kind of reassuring up there. In the way you choose the bowings, the bow strokes you use, you're hoping to demonstrate some unifying principle of style. Whether people like it or not, we can all do the same thing, which is good.
``I take a pretty active role in rehearsals, saying things to the section, working with the conductor. There's a lot of work that people don't see.''
``He's a great leader,'' said violinist Lesa McCoy Bishop. ``We're lucky he's here. We're very, very lucky. In the past, we've had good players who'd come and were great technically, but didn't have the personality to get along with the orchestra and the conductor. I think he's the best we've had so far.''
Armstrong certainly is the most experienced player to occupy the chair. He grew up in Grand Ledge, a suburb of Lansing, Mich. His father had a classical record collection, and he was wondering about playing the violin when Pinchas Zuckerman came to town. After hearing Zuckerman play a concerto, young Armstrong was sold.
``Nothing else ever really mattered to me. It seemed really clear to me always. This is what I wanted to do.'' He went to Juilliard as an undergraduate, in a class that included Salerno-Sonnenberg, Cho-Liang Lin, Joseph Swensen and Nigel Kennedy. One of the first concerts he heard was the Juilliard Orchestra playing Strauss' ``Ein Heldenleben,'' with McDuffie as concertmaster.
``I went in with the attitude, `I'll see how it turns out. I'll play as well as I can.' '' After graduation, he ``had a year of what they call professional studies, which means you're neither a profesional nor a student. I was thinking about pursuing the concertmaster angle, and I thought that the way to do that was was to enter some competitions.''
Before he got the chance, fate intervened in the form of Juilliard Quartet first violinist Robert Mann, who said, ``Hey, here's a quartet looking for a violinist.''
``Knowing what I know now, things would be a lot harder,'' Armstrong said. ``Then, I was 22 years old. it seemed worth a shot.'' The New World had already been together for six years, with some personnel changes. It had management and had won the prestigious Naumburg competition. All Armstrong had to do was fit in.
He stayed for a decade, touring and recording. Four New World discs are available in a mid-priced box set from the British label IMP Masters.
In 1993, the quartet disbanded after the violist joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic. ``He had a pressing need to make some money,'' Armstrong said. ``It was a strain on him, a strain on his family life. We did not have a university residency. We made all our living on the road, and the expenses are so enormous.
``You go out feeling that you've made a very nice fee. Then you pay the airlines. Your agent gets 20 percent off the top. Publicity photos. Flyers. Instrument insurance. Taxes. By the time you're done with all this. . . Miss DeLay told me, `Plan on taking home 10 percent of your fee.' That was pretty close.
``We wondered, `What are we going to do now?' Were we going to find another violist, put all the repertoire back together and slog it all out? With the cuts to higher education, universities were not in the position to start ambitious new chamber music programs. It just seemed like the time.
``It's great music, and I still miss it. The late Beethoven quartets, there's very few people who can really play those. It's a very exclusive club.''
During his decade of playing the supporting role of second violin, he kept his solo chops together by playing Paganini every day and performing sonatas whenever possible. He also came to believe it's important for performers to play music they love.
``I started realizing many of my favorite composers were composers of this century - Bartok, Prokofiev, Berg. The music I really respond to very deeply is Bartok. I truly believe Bartok is the great composer of this century. He solved the great 20th century problem of what to do after tonality. He manages to integrate the most sophisticated Western art music procedures - elaborate counterpoint, enormous formal schemes - and also maintain earthiness, directness of expression.''
In this concerto, Armstrong said, ``there are moments of uncompromising dissonances, but they are more than balanced by moments of great sweetness and unbelievable power. It's such powerful music - it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.''
Dancing was the farthest thing from his mind at a runthrough of ``The Nutcracker'' last fall. He arrived with a pinky broken in a freak driving accident.
``He showed up just before rehearsal,'' Bishop recalled. ``He was sitting there pale and shaking. I thought, `Oh, Vahn.' It's like being an athlete. Your hand is your job. It's amazing how fast he came back. I know Bartok was in the back of his mind. It's extremely hard.''
``It was still broken when I played `Scheherazade,' '' Armstrong said. ``It's not all back yet. I hope it's going to get to the point where I'm the only one who notices. The stress of the little finger problem shows up in other places. Other things happen. If you've got one finger that's clumsy and slow and out of balance, you're going to throw the whole hand out of balance.''
Bishop said Armstrong seems to be in shape. ``He sounds good. You'll be sitting there in the opera pit, and you'll hear everyone practicing `boheme.' And then you'll hear Bartok floating around. `There's Vahn. . . first movement. . . second movement.' It's great we have a concertmaster who can play it.'' MEMO: CONCERT FACTS
What: The Virginia Symphony, with violinist Vahn Armstrong and music
director JoAnn Falletta. The program includes Verdi's Overture to
``Nabucco,'' Bartok's Violin Concerto No. 2 and Berlioz' ``Symphonie
Fantastique.''
When: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Falletta will speak on the
program an hour before each concert.
Where: Chrysler Hall, Norfolk
Tickets: $15-$34. Call 623-2310 for more information ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Beth Bergman, Staff
Vahn Armstrong will step into the spotlight as a soloist with the
Virginia Symphony Friday and Saturday.
by CNB