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Finding America with Augustin Hadelich, on "American Road Trip"

Augustin Hadelich plays violin, standing on an expanse of a Utah salt flat.
Suxiao Yang
Augustin Hadelich

20 years after first moving to the United States, violinist Augustin Hadelich's newest recording is a celebration of the kaleidoscopic tapestry of American classical music.

"People that I've known for my whole life, they say, 'Oh, you've become so American,'" violinist Augustin Hadelich said recently. "I'm kind of the American now, presenting American music in Germany, when it was the other way around 20 years ago."

For the German-Italian violinist, who made his name in the United States with music by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and other European giants, it's a pretty big shift. But the 20 years he's spent calling the U.S. home have shown him that there are many ways to be American — an idea he explores in his latest recording for Warner Classics, American Road Trip.

In collaboration with pianist Orion Weiss, Hadelich charts a course through time and across the U.S. map, from the forests of New England to the open roads of the American Southwest, with frequent stops in between. Together they visit Chicago jazz clubs and Jimi Hendrix concerts, the Deep South and the wide prairie, the streets of New York and a few country-western hoedowns, too, finding astounding musical gems in each and every place. Recorded at GBH's Fraser Performance Studio by Audio Producer Antonio Oliart, American Road Trip is a sparkling showcase of the music — and the musicians — that make this country so vibrant.

Hadelich's playing is as immaculate as ever, whether he's soaring over Romantic melodies, "singing" along to out-of-tune camp songs, or imitating a monster munching away at your dreams. He describes this "cornucopia of styles" in his liner notes:

"The line between popular music, crossover, and classical composition is often blurred ... As I traveled and performed around the country, I also explored and adopted musical languages and traditions which became part of my own. I am now a part of its musical tapestry!"

Hadelich spoke about the kaleidoscopic music on American Road Trip, his thoughts on becoming "more American," and how his daughter's dancing inspired his own arrangements of classic fiddle tunes. Hear the conversation using the audio player above, and read the transcript below.

Transcript (edited for clarity):

[MUSIC - KROLL: Banjo and Fiddle]

Kendall Todd I'm Kendall Todd and I'm here on Zoom with violinist Augustin Hadelich. Augustin, thank you so much for your time today.

Augustin Hadelich Hi. Hey, It's great to talk to you.

Kendall Todd Great to talk to you as well. Your newest recording is called American Road Trip, which you recorded here actually at GBH at our Fraser Performance Studio. I'd love to start by talking about your concept for this recording. Why a road trip?

Album cover for Augustin Hadelich's "American Road Trip."

Augustin Hadelich Well, as usually happens, I came up with the title a little bit after I basically had the program for the album. But it struck me how different the styles and characters of these pieces were. I think recording an American album is in some ways a bit different from something like a French album or a Czech album or a Russian album where you feel like all the composers have a relationship somehow to one another, like they influence each other and are part of the same musical tradition. Whereas in America, I felt like some of these composers really came from different planets. And it felt to me like a road trip. They all lived in different places, too, so you can think of it that way. But it's also stylistically like a road trip going from one composer to another. And really it's kind of a different world and worldview and mood and climate of the music in a certain way. And I think this is something special and unique about American classical music that's like the country itself. It is kind of a melting pot of so many different ideas and cultures and influences. And I think that American classical music is a reflection of that.

There's just totally different ways to compose that have existed in parallel, that even during the time when many composers were writing Romantic and Neo-Romantic music, you also at the same time had avant-gardeists and composers that were much more out there. And so right at the start of the album, I sort of featured two people like that.

Amy Beach is very, very romantic and lush music, and Charles Ives, who was the guy who always, yeah, marches to the beat of his own drum and is kind of an oddball composer who does crazy experiments in polytonality and all this stuff. And then, of course, eventually, minimalism, which I think is really like a new American style that, when it appeared, was kind of recognizably American. And then there's so many rich traditions of folk music and popular music that have also influenced and inspired composers, different composers over the years. And I felt like it was important to have that in the album as well, especially since some of these genres are really not very well known outside of America.

I mean, jazz, of course, is known everywhere in the world, but country music, for example, in which the violin is such an important instrument, especially bluegrass, violin is the quintessential bluegrass instrument. Where I grew up and when I grew up, in Italy and in Germany, I had never heard of it. It was only when, I guess about 25 years ago, a movie came out called O Brother, Where Art Thou, by the Coen Brothers, and that's really the first time I ever heard music like that. Then, shortly afterwards, I made one of my first trips to America for a concert, and it was to Louisville, Kentucky, and there was a bluegrass festival, and I went there. So I got introduced fairly early, in my travels to America, to this kind of thing. And I was just blown away and kind of fell in love with this music back then. But it was many, many years until I actually dared to myself to start a foray in that direction. I wasn't steeped in that kind of music, and maybe didn't have such easy access to it. But after hearing so much, and after living in America... Now it's been 20 years since I moved to America. That's another reason why this is a good occasion now to make an American album. And I felt like now is the right time to record this album.

Kendall Todd What was your first impression hearing bluegrass music for the first time?

Augustin Hadelich Not knowing what it was, I was instantly hearing the connections that it has to jazz tradition and especially blues harmony, and also its connection to other styles of fiddling. I mean, I think different fiddling traditions are somehow related. I just found it to be really, really fun to listen to. And it also looked like it would be fun to play. But one of the things that makes it a bit hard for classical musicians to access, to start doing that, is that it's generally not written down the way that classical music is. I mean, I would say in general, it's hard for classical musicians rhythmically to play other genres because classical music is all about being really free and flexible with the tempo and letting your inspiration actually change. The emotion often takes the tempo with it. And in jazz and in many other genres, the beat is actually really steady. I think that's where sometimes classical musicians have some trouble when they first play this, because we're not used to having such a steady beat no matter what. Even in pieces with relatively steady beat, there are still moments where you take a breath and you wait. And that's why classical music sort of lives from this flexibility. Whereas in other genres it lives from the beat being really steady. And classical musicians also have a tendency to be sort of ahead of the beat or at the top of the beat when they first try it.

I think ultimately it wasn't that different from any other style that initially feels a bit foreign or feels new or, you know, I'm not quite sure what to do. But then the more pieces that I hear and the more pieces I play in that style, the more second nature it becomes. So it was that way also when I played my first French piece growing up, or when I was getting into Czech music or Hungarian music. At one point I got really into Argentinean music and tango, and maybe that's a good example because initially I wasn't playing it right at all. But after hearing a lot of it, you start to become familiar with the language, with the kind of timing and feeling and this sound and articulation that it's supposed to have.

I would say that swing is probably the hardest thing for classical musicians to learn, particularly because you can't really explain it or teach it or write it down, because if you try to write it down, you sort of straitjacket the swing into something that it's not. It's actually supposed to be much more free and spontaneous. And that was something, many years ago, when I played my first piece that had swing in it. I think it was Paul Schoenfeld's Café Music, this totally ridiculous piece for piano trio. [Laughs] And it's a very fun piece. I remember it was kind of difficult to get the right feeling of it because when I was busy swinging, I would actually like lose track of where it was rhythmically. But there's one piece on the album which is Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's "Louisiana Blues Strut."

[MUSIC - PERKINSON: Louisiana Blues Strut]

This piece is, I think, particularly difficult rhythmically. Sometimes I hear students play it. Now it's become — this is great news — it's become actually more popular for people to learn. But often it's the rhythm that's the hardest thing with it because you're supposed to swing, but you actually have to keep switching the swing on and off because it's not actually straight up blues; it's composed with very intricate kinds of rhythms nested within one another. And some of these syncopations only work when you're not swinging. So you just sort of have to work that out. And you can't really work it out by looking at the music; you sort of have to work it out by playing it and and thinking, "Does this feels right?" And listening back to yourself. It's in some ways, I think, rhythmically one of the trickiest things I've played because it's like another level.

[MUSIC - PERKINSON]

It's not just swinging, but it's swinging with, also, an incredible awareness of where the beats would be so that some of the syncopations are actually not with swing. And then the end, it's supposed to feel kind of effortless, like you just sort of came up with that on the spot.

[MUSIC - PERKINSON]

And it's not that way when you learn it. I mean, I don't want to suggest that it was painful or really, really hard work to learn. It's a really fun piece. So I enjoyed the whole process of it. But it took a while until I felt like I had I had the right feeling for the rhythm.

Kendall Todd Yeah. Swinging seems easier than it is, I think. [Laughs]

Augustin Hadelich Yeah.

Kendall Todd You mentioned that it's been 20 years since you moved to the United States, and it's also been ten years since you became a U.S. citizen. Looking back on those 20 years, how would you say they have shaped you as a person and as a musician?

Augustin Hadelich Well, so I'm 40 now, so literally half my life has been spent in the United States and the other half before that was spent growing up in Europe. And of course, it's not such a neat separation because I've constantly traveled in Europe after moving to the U.S. I came to the U.S. before I moved here. But I'm just a totally different person now than 20 years ago. So I would be a very different person if I hadn't gone to the U.S. I think it was, in some ways for me at the time, kind of a new beginning. I mean as it is, if you immigrate to another country, it's like you close one chapter and start another chapter in your life. But I wasn't thinking of it as moving permanently at the time. I was just going to come to study, and I was excited to go to New York and live in a big city because I grew up in the Italian countryside, which is very pretty, but also sometimes as a teenager maybe you feel like there's not much going on, so you kind of get excited about the big city.

This is something special and unique about American classical music that's like the country itself: It is kind of a melting pot of so many different ideas and cultures and influences.

But then I ended up really starting my professional career in the U.S. because of the Indianapolis Violin Competition, which was in 2006. So after winning that competition, I suddenly had concerts in the U.S. and well, I'm not going to move back now because that doesn't make any sense. All my concerts are here. And then before I knew it, my life was here, all my friends. And it just basically felt like home. So, yeah, ten years after, I became a citizen. It felt like the natural thing to do as I thought, "I don't want to want to leave here," although I am happy that nowadays I also perform in Europe.

Funnily enough, because my career started in the U.S. and only later did I start playing a lot in Europe, in some places where I play now, I actually played as a child because I when I was a child, I had a bit of a small prodigy career. It was that era when people were excited about prodigies playing the violin. But they often don't know that I was there before, like, 30 years before. I played there 25 years before [Laughs]. And sometimes also they don't know that I speak German, so they'll speak to me in English and ask me, you know, "Oh, would you like to play the [Samuel] Barber concerto?" And offer me American music. And so I'm kind of the American now, presenting American music in Germany when it was sort of the other way around 20 years ago that I was the German musician and visiting the U.S. and I would be asked to play, of course, Mendelssohn and Beethoven. And so it's funny how these things, how these things go.

Ultimately, it's a mix of all these places, you know, that have shaped me. And I am in many ways very German, but also I feel at home in America, and I have become much more American, and people that I've known for my whole life, they say, "Oh, you've become so American." You know, "You talk like an American now." And then, Italy has always been originally my home. So when I thought of home and tried to picture home, it was always olive trees and cypresses. I don't know what would be the German equivalent, actually. I don't know, gray skies and ...[Laughs] I don't know. Germany can be very pretty too, but it never quite felt like my original home, even though culturally I'm more German than Italian.

Kendall Todd Your collaborator on American Road Trip is pianist Orion Weiss, and something that he said in one of your promotional videos that you released for this recording was that some of the music was so difficult that you really had to convince him that it was worth doing for this album. Can you tell me about how those conversations went and how you ended up shaping this album together?

Augustin Hadelich Well, you know, this is a common thing that happens when you agree to learn a new piece and then you open the music and you're like, "Oh no, it's really difficult." And he's like, "Oh, do I really have to?" I mean, this is something that we all go through as musicians. And I've known Orion for a long time, like 15 years, and we've played many times together and also played concerts and tours together. And I'd been talking to him for quite a while about, "There's this awesome piece by Steven Hartke called 'Netsuke,' and I really love it. And sometime we should play it." And he's always like, "Yeah, yeah, let's do it sometime." But then I said, "I want to do an American album. I really want this to be on it," because I didn't want it to be all short pieces. Then it becomes kind of like a lightweight collection of little bonbons, and I wanted some pieces that had a bit more weight and a bit more bearing, and modern as well, to kind of counterbalance everything. And he said, "Yeah, great." But then when he started listening to it and started learning it, he was like, "Ugh, do we really have to play this piece?".

Because I think the problem of this piece is that the first movement is rhythmically so incredibly difficult. It's like absurdly difficult when you look at the music. "Are you kidding me? How are you supposed to...?" There's no bar lines and the instruments start being off by just, like, a tiny little 32nd note. So, it's like these barely perceptible amounts that we have to start to be apart and keep that independently, keep counting independently of one another. But it's also an incredibly short movement. It's like two minutes long or something. And so I said, "Listen, look at the other movements." And then he was like, "Oh, yeah, those are really fun." And I think the first movement is fun too, to listen to. But to learn it, you probably spend maybe half your time when you rehearse this piece on those first two minutes, and the other half on the other 17 minutes or whatever, however long the piece is. And so the first impression was like, this is unplayable. But, no, no. I talked him into it and it was all very good-natured. You know, it wasn't a fight. It was just kind of was like, "Ah... we really have to learn this?"

But it's a wonderful piece that's so descriptive. I guess some parts of it sound American. You can tell he's an American composer because there's one movement that's a bit jazzy, but it's actually inspired by these Japanese miniature sculptures called netsuke. And he took six of those sculptures and tried to really set to music that scene. What really impressed me about it was that he uses all of the extended, crazy, avant-garde techniques that people have developed over the past, I don't know, 75 years and uses them to make these scenes come to life so vividly. It's almost sometimes cinematic. There's one section where a thief gets chased and then beaten up and it's like you can practically see it when you hear the music. And I was really enthusiastic about someone who doesn't reject avant-gardeism, like, "I'm done with this. You know, I write differently now." And then you have got people who really believe in the avant-garde cause. But actually, I think the way people increasingly write now, the way they should write, is that they say "We can use all of this, these things we've learned and all these experiments and these techniques with which we've enriched our vocabulary, but to write music." It's no longer about, "I'm trying this new thing." Now it's about, "I want to describe a little monster that eats nightmares and that hides under the bed. And so I'm going to use these extended techniques and the scratch tone and this and that and this and that." And you can picture it, you know, when you hear it. And I felt like that's exactly what I want to see from composers.

I'm always convinced of a composer when I feel like there's nothing random in a piece, that every note is kind of where it should be and you can't change any of the notes like that. It wouldn't work. And not all new music is like that. Sometimes you see a piece and you're just like, I don't understand. Like you could put these notes in a different order and it would feel the same. Steven Hartke, I feel like everything is just there. But he does write music that's really, really, really, really hard. And when I looked at other pieces of his, he doesn't shy away from writing things that are hard. And so that explains why not too many people have learned this piece so far.

Kendall Todd I'm really glad you brought that piece up, because the sounds that you're able to create are so interesting and descriptive, as you were saying. What are some of the things that you have to do with your instrument to produce those sounds?

Augustin Hadelich Well, he uses all the normal colors that have been in use for a long time, like playing near the bridge or some stuff like that. But there is this one effect, which is a scratch tone where you kind of actually put too much pressure on the bow and move the bow very, very slowly. And it kind of chokes the sound off and that creates this sound. It's like this monster that's munching at your dreams, you know.

[MUSIC - HARTKE: Netsuke]

There's another thing which kind of imitates a seagull sound. Something you do with harmonics by sliding the harmonic down. But you do it in a way that normally you would... Well, this is getting very technical, but normally if you have a harmonic that you play very high up and it slides down, you would have to decrease the distance between the fingers because of how the violin is built. But if you don't do that, then it will sort of jump pitches and it kind of sounds like a seagull.

[MUSIC - HARTKE]

I don't know. It's one of those effects that musicians sometimes do, like sort of as a joke, you know, we can imitate animals. I can sound like this animal. Paganini was apparently very good at that. He sometimes entertained the audience by imitating donkeys and chickens. And [laughs] that's something that musicians fool around with. But in this case, it's also kind of an eerie sound that this-- it's a good monster, you know, it's not one that we have to be scared of because it eats your nightmares. We're happy it's under the bed to help us out.

[Laughs] There's one movement that's the most Japanese sounding one. It's called "Tanuki Playing the Samisen," where Tanuki is this kind of raccoon-like character from Japanese folklore and folktales. And he's playing this instrument. So, Orion Weiss, who I was playing with, he has to use a large wooden hammer to play the strings inside the piano. Kind of sounds like a gong because you really hear the resonance inside the piano of that impact. So it's a very cool sound.

[MUSIC - HARTKE]

It was something that, you know, then when you record it, Antonio [Oliart], our producer, he was saying, "I don't think I've recorded that before." So we then made experiments, you know, and what do we use? Do we use a hammer? Do we use a 2x4? Like, what are you going to use to strike the strings? What sounds better? You know, you try different things.

And also, at one point I have to use a guitar pick, which was quite fun. It's not harder really, than plucking with your finger. It's just a little bit different. But it's actually very bad for the strings. So I had to exchange my strings afterwards because violin strings have a winding that breaks when you use a guitar pick, at least if you use it a lot. So they're not really built for that. It's a fun kind of experimentation also. But then what I love about it is that it's not just experimentation. You're trying to create a specific feeling, and if you really nail it, then you feel like you're there in the scene this statue describes.

[MUSIC - HARTKE]

And one of the nice things about this whole album was that every piece is so different. So there was never a feeling of, okay, we have to get through this piece and this piece and that it feels like it's kind of the same, you're in the same style all day long. So every time you move on to another piece, it's such a different world and feeling that it's very refreshing and you're excited to play the next thing. So I would say it's maybe the most fun that I've had working on a full album, just because it's so, so much variety, and a lot of the pieces are so much fun too.

Kendall Todd A lot of the music on this album actually was new to me before I heard it. And how much of it was new to you and how did you discover those pieces?

Augustin Hadelich Well I have to say, before I before I moved to America, I didn't play any American piece. I mean, I'd heard of the Barber Concerto, like, I had the recording growing up, but that's a very obscure piece in Europe. And after I learned it, then I played it in Germany for the first time. They were like, "Where did you find this Barber concerto?" They imagined I had found it in some attic. [Laughs] Like, you know, it's one of the most famous pieces, like so mainstream. So, I don't know, there is a problem that American music is just not as established and well-known outside of America as it should be. But it's true that some of the pieces on this album are also not so well known in America either. So I guess some of them I started playing quite a while ago.

I probably heard John Adams "Road Movies" for the first time, maybe ten years ago, maybe more than ten years ago, actually. I heard James Ehnes play it, and I just really loved the piece and thought one day I want to play it. And eventually I learned it. It was one of those things that I think is often the case with John Adams, that at first feels really, really hard. But then, actually, when you play it for a while, for me, it's a very joyful experience to play it. You can kind of get into the zone of this constantly moving motor in the piece. And it's very fun. So that I've played for a while.

The [Charles] Ives Sonata No. 4 I learned quite recently. Some of the pieces on the album I learned about four or five years ago. I made an effort in 2020 to kind of just look at music by Black composers and the Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson piece. And also, there's a piece by Daniel Bernard Roumain called "Filter" on the album, which is kind of an homage to Jimi Hendrix. Both those pieces were on an album by Rachel Barton Pine of music by Black composers. And she kind of helped me find the music. And I mean, I looked through a whole huge pile of music and learned a bunch of pieces, but those were two pieces that I felt like, I'm not going to stop playing them. I want to keep playing them. And especially the Perkinson, I played as an encore so many times, and it just kind of kept growing on me. I felt like his violin writing reminds me of Eugène Ysaÿe, but if Ysaÿe grew up with blues music. [Laughs] That's kind of what he would have written. And so I totally fell in love with that.

Then there's another kind of unusual find, which is by Eddie South called "Black Gypsy."

[MUSIC - SOUTH: Black Gypsy]

Eddie South was a violin prodigy maybe about 100 years ago. He grew up in Chicago. But because he was Black, he couldn't really have a classical career. Naturally, growing up in Chicago, he played in jazz bands and was familiar with that whole tradition and that became his career. He spent a lot of time traveling in Europe as well and got to meet Django Reinhardt, who is, you know, the creator of what's called Gypsy jazz. And then Eddie South brought those influences back with him to America. He's a very interesting jazz musician who made a lot of cool recordings. But it's extremely hard, those pieces of his that are compositions like "Black Gypsy," that are actually written down. It's really hard to find the music because it's been out of print since the 1930s, basically. It was printed in 1937 or something and it's been out of print right after. So, finally I found a string quartet in San Francisco called Quartet San Francisco, who had recorded an album of Eddie South's music, and they had gotten their hands on photocopies of some of these things. And that's become also one of my favorite encores. It's a wonderful piece.

It's a style of violin playing, this fiddle playing, that is calling out to classical musicians to play it. It lies so well on the instrument. It's so natural... There's so much out there and it's rarely heard in a concert hall. So I realized this is really something that's just waiting to happen. Someone has to do it.

I already mentioned the Stephen Hartke that I probably heard for the first time about ten years ago. Actually, it was Midori who told me about it. I think I was talking to her about different, exciting new pieces and she said, "You should really hear this. This is really something special." And when I listened to it, I was determined, okay, sooner or later I have to play this. But I think it was maybe five or six years ago that I first played it.

So, over the years, these pieces have slowly joined my life, and actually, now, when I was brainstorming the program with Orion, we realized we actually had way too much music. We could have filled two CDs and had to throw some really interesting stuff out that would also have been good. But we kept the stuff that I felt had to be on the album. There's no way that we can do without. And then we're talking about how long can the CD be. CDs now can be, like, 83 minutes, so it can be quite long. It's no longer 78 minutes. So we're like negotiating on the length and "Can we still keep this other piece in?" But that was a conscious decision that I sort of wanted to stay away from the most obvious stuff.

Okay, we have some obvious stuff. We have, because it's wonderful, we have this song off of [Leonard] Bernstein's "West Side Story," in an arrangement and some stuff you can't you can't have an American album without. But we didn't go for the Gershwin arrangements, for example, which are one of the most recorded American violin pieces for violin and piano, these Heifetz arrangements. I just decided, like, everyone else's American album already has them, and I thought, we have so much stuff that's so great that I want everyone to hear, and that maybe I also have more of a connection with. It's tough when you have stuff on your list and then you say like, okay, this doesn't fit, this doesn't fit, you know, it's too much to kind of narrow it down so that we have as many styles and contrasts as possible, but that these pieces also sort of can fit together.

And then that's kind of when the name American Road Trip came up, because I felt like we're going from one world to another every time we switch composers. So, at first somebody had some other suggestions for titles. I mean, there were others, but they were super cheesy. It was like American Dreams. I don't know, stuff like that. I was like, that's a bit cheesy. And American Road Trip, I felt like that really fits how the album feels. Although ironically, I've never really done the road trip thing of driving all across the whole country. [Laughs] I mean, I sort of feel like I have, because I've been to most states. Because of the album coming out, I counted, and I think I've been to 48 of the 50 states. I haven't found a place to play in North Dakota and South Dakota yet. [Laughs] But I've been everywhere. So I sort of feel like as if I'd been on a complete road trip, but over the last ten years or something. But no, I've never actually got in a car and driven all across.

Kendall Todd Do you want to?

Augustin Hadelich I don't know. From what I hear, there are also large stretches that are kind of boring because it's beautiful but then doesn't change. Large parts of the country are so flat and I don't know if... it is a long time to spend in a car. But yes, maybe one day. I hear that it is a special experience that's worth doing. So, yeah.

Kendall Todd Maybe someday. Speaking of the piece "Filter," where you play in the style of Jimi Hendrix, how do you get into that headspace to play like a guitar solo on your violin?

Augustin Hadelich It's kind of fun to push yourself to try to make a sound that you've never tried before. And at first it was a bit tricky. I was, through experimentation, like, how can I get it to sound more like that? The reason it's called "Filter" is because there is this effect where you start bringing the bow closer and closer to the bridge until it's on top of the bridge, and then you push it the other way until it's on top of the fingerboard. When it's on top of the bridge, you hear a lot of high overtones. And eventually all you hear are the shrillest overtones. And when you bow on the fingerboard, you're actually dampening the high overtones. So it kind of imitates these high pass and low pass filters, like if you have a dial and you turn it all the way to the high frequencies, all the way to the low ones.

[MUSIC - ROUMAIN: Filter]

Like you would maybe on, you know, sound settings for an electric guitar. I sort of knew what that's supposed to sound like and was trying to get that. I did hear a lot of Jimi Hendrix when I when I first came to America. My roommate in the Juilliard dorms was constantly listening to Jimi Hendrix. And so I heard a lot of that. So it wasn't unfamiliar to me, what it was supposed to sound like. But just because you know what it's supposed to sound like doesn't mean you can do it. It was a bit of a trial and error until I felt like I started to get the feeling. Of course, it'll always sound like a violin and not an electric guitar, but you can get some of the same sort of intensity of the sound, that the vibrato kind of starts to distort, or that the sound is really quite extreme in that way.

[MUSIC - ROUMAIN]

I'm always convinced of a composer when I feel like there's nothing random in a piece, that every note is where it should be.

I've played it a bunch of times in concert, and then I just put it at the end of the first half because you have to really exhaust yourself completely. You have to just go for it and you can't really play the way that way. Normally, when you have a piece with a lot of moving notes, you try to use the wrist of your right hand a lot so that you don't hurt your arm. But with this piece, you're supposed to use your wrist, your arm, your shoulder, everything you've got to just make it as as crazy and as fast and as loud as possible. So, I put it at the end of the first half so I can recover.

But now, when you're recording it, normally in a recording session, you might play a piece, if it goes really well, maybe just three times. But maybe you play ten times, however long until you're happy. And you can't do that with this piece because after playing it once, the arm is kind of tired, you can't do it again the same way. And so I sort of came back to it and made sure that the other stuff that I would play afterwards was not the most taxing stuff for the arm. You have to be careful with that. But this is a danger with recording sessions in a studio, that because it's so comfortable and so safe and there's no audience that sometimes it also sounds like, it's 10 a.m. in the morning and I'm just, you know, playing this piece. It should have this kind of crazy excitement as though it was the concert of your life. Even if you're playing it for the third time and it is 10 a.m. And that's the hardest thing about playing in a studio. You do have to push yourself to play with intensity, and especially in this piece. So I had to pace it, and I planned the recording sessions actually around when I would play "Filter," so that I would have the most strength to play it but wouldn't hurt myself. So I could still play the other stuff and make a nice sound when I'm playing Amy Beach or something like that.

Kendall Todd That's great. That's such an interesting piece. It's really cool. There's also a piece of music on this album that you arranged, "Wild Fiddler's Rag." What are some of the elements that you wanted to bring out in this piece while arranging it for this recording?

Augustin Hadelich I think it started out with the fact that I was determined that I wanted something that was country fiddle music of some sort.

[MUSIC - Arr. HADELICH: Wild Fiddler's Rag]

And this was a piece that I really liked. I heard Mark O'Connor has a really cool recording of it and I heard that. But many other fiddlers have played it. Byron Berline, I think was one, and Howdy Forrester is the one that now, if I have to say a composer, then I say Howdy Forrester because he was the first fiddler. But it doesn't quite work the same way in that the world, like people just sort of play each other's tunes but then play them totally differently.

[MUSIC - Arr. HADELICH]

And so, I think it was last year that in the summer I felt like I need a new encore and I want to finally get into this "Wild Fiddler's Rag," and I looked at different versions. Mark O'Connor published his version, so I looked at that and then listened to the others and started to play around with that, to move stuff around and add some double stops and kind of played with it.

I found that maybe the hardest thing when you arrange something for solo violin is that you're in charge of all aspects of the music, including the rhythmic feel and the drive that the music has. And as soon as you stop playing, the music stops as well, because there's no one else. Normally, people play this, like, with a guitar accompaniment or a banjo accompaniment or something, and then that sort of puts you in the mood, and then the violin can just fiddle on top of that. Now, when you try to do the whole thing, I felt at first there's something missing. And so then with certain rhythmic things that I did, but also a little bit of swing, then I arrived at the version that I felt like now has the right spirit, even though usually when people play "Wild Fiddler's Rag," they don't play it with swing. So it's not like this is an authentic version. I made a solo violin arrangement for it. And you kind of do whatever you have to do to make it a fun experience to hear. So that's why I added a little bit of swing and don't play too fast, so that I can add more double stops. And, I ended up having a lot of fun with this when I was playing it as an encore, often in places where people maybe have never heard music in this style before. I mean, it gets the best reactions when I'm in America, in a place where people start clapping along or start cheering. And then in some places where I'm playing, in Vienna or something, they were like, "Oh, what's that?"

But I think that this is a style of violin playing, this fiddle playing, that is calling out to classical musicians to play it. It lies so well on the instrument. It's so natural. It's such a natural thing to do on the instrument. It's actually, in a way, much easier than to get into jazz, because violin is not usually a jazz instrument. I mean, it is sometimes. There have been some great jazz violinists, but violinists in the fiddle world and the bluegrass world... It's such an important instrument. There's so much out there and it's rarely heard in a concert hall. So I realized this is really something that's just waiting, waiting to happen. Someone has to do it.

Kendall Todd I really love also the dedication that you wrote in the liner notes for this album: "With many thanks to my daughter for making sure my arrangement of 'Wild Fiddler's Rag' was good enough to dance to." Can you tell me about that?

Augustin Hadelich [Laughs] Well, I guess she was about three at the time when I wrote this and she only liked me to play fast music anyway, but particularly whenever I played the recording of this or when I was trying to play this, she would start dancing. And she loved to play it over and over and over. It was a big motivator to finish the arrangement and to keep going because I sort of had to. I was asked to play it over and over anyway. So it's like, well, I might as well keep working on this arrangement. And then it reminds you that you should be able to move to it, you know? That sometimes when you're composing or arranging, sometimes you get, you know, very drawn into the minutia of how to arrange and voice leading and all these things. So it was helpful to see her dance, to put me in the right mood.

Kendall Todd What a cute story [laughs]. Augustin Hadelich, thank you so much for your time today and congratulations on American Road Trip.

Augustin Hadelich Thank you so much for having me.

[MUSIC - Arr. HADELICH]

Listen to American Road Trip:

Kendall Todd is the Content Manager for GBH Music.