JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
STEPHEN SITARSKI: I’m currently preparing to perform the Prokofiev 2nd violin concerto on April 27th with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s a big deal for me because I have not played this particular piece in public before. It is always a challenge and ultimately a thrill to push oneself to achieve something new. The concerto is a wonderful piece and I’ve gained so much technically and musically learning it.
As for why it may be important to others…Needless to say, great music (or any music for that matter) doesn’t just exist on paper – it must be presented live to an audience in order for the composer to be able to communicate directly with listeners.
Also, because I am the concertmaster of the HPO, it is of interest to the other orchestra members and especially the HPO patrons what their leader can do. It is important to put my reputation to the test to retain my credibility as a leader.
JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?
SS: It is always a little scary accepting a project that requires learning something new, especially a difficult work. At the beginning of the process many questions abound: am I capable of overcoming the hurdles inherent in the music? Will I rise to the challenge? Will I do justice to the composer? Can I convincingly portray the musical essence? Will I be favourably compared with the myriad of violinists who have performed and recorded this concerto before me?
So, aside from the technical challenges, there are self-confidence issues as well. But I believe that part of the experience of being human is to constantly push oneself beyond a safe, comfortable place. This is the area in which one can grow and develop – regardless of the level of success or failure.
JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?
SS: Playing a musical instrument is very similar to being an athlete in terms of the discipline required – the rigour of physical repetition under strenuous conditions, plus the mental toughness to be your own harshest critic. Success requires the constant striving to find better practice techniques, to find outside channels for learning (listening to recordings or watching videos of other musicians performing the same music, and/or seeking the advice or coaching from an experienced expert who can see/hear issues that we may miss ourselves.
And lastly, music inspires a personal, spiritual kind of vulnerability from each artist. When we perform, we expose part of who we are, for better or worse. It takes a lot of courage to summon the strength and energy to stand in front of both musical colleagues and an audience of hundreds or perhaps thousands of people. The rewards can be huge, but the failures can be devastating. Almost every other medium of artistic expression allows for the artist to correct, edit, and revise their work before exhibiting it before peers and public. Live performance happens completely in ‘the now’. One cannot take back any one moment…
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?
SS: With this particular project, it has been a challenge overcoming many of the technical problems built into the music. Since Prokofiev was not a violinist (he was a very fine pianist), much of the virtuosic passagework is not idiomatic for a violinist. So, I was forced to be a real problem solver and had to push myself to ‘think outside the box’. Many of my solutions for some of the technical challenges took months to develop. Sometimes what works on a particular Monday doesn’t work on the subsequent Thursday and it’s ‘back to the drawing board’ until a solution is found that is reliable in as many different situations as possible. Just a few days before my performance and I’m still ‘tweaking’ some details.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
SS: Trusting my instincts. When you are an interpreter, unless you are playing a piece that no one has ever heard before, there are resources available of other musicians who have performed that music before. And while it is tempting to just copy a particularly strong interpretation, it is far more interesting to bring to an audience ‘your’ feelings about the music. Therefore, while one can learn certain things from studying someone else’s ideas, it is incumbent on one to discover how YOU wish to tell the musical story.
The musical score ‘on paper’ is basically a composer’s blueprint for the structure of the composition. Basic elements must be followed quite accurately for the integrity of the musical structure. In other words, there are weight bearing pillars, exact proportions to be followed, and specific materials used or the structure is wobbly, or even worse, cannot stand.
As an interpreter, the decisions are more cosmetic: painting the front door green, putting drapes in the front window, having an area rug in the living room, etc. These design features are what distinguishes different performances. Imagine if every house on a street had exactly the same architectural specs, but then ALSO had the exact same decorating features. Not too interesting…
JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?
SS: I think first and foremost I would like to meet Beethoven. He was arguably the most revolutionary composer in Western classical music history. He dealt with all sorts of personal strife and outside challenges and yet remained completely uncompromising in his creative output right until the very end. I would love to understand more about his inner drive in aspiring to such heights of creativity.
Among living artists, I would love to spend time with the great violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya. She is among the most innovative and inspiring performers in the whole world. Carrying on the tradition set out by violinist Gidon Kremer, she refuses to take any piece of music for granted. She is constantly striving to reinvent the way a piece of music can be approached and ultimately presented. Some of what she does could be considered eccentric, nevertheless her creative process is fascinating to me.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.
SS: I can’t think of one watershed moment. I consider myself as always learning and always believing that there is no end to self-improvement. I try to be inspired by as many things as I can be, musical and nonmusical. I almost never turn down a challenge or opportunity, even if it is in unfamiliar territory.
Seven years ago, I quit a full-time concertmaster position with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. I had been doing the job there for 15 years and I felt that I needed different stimuli and different environments and colleagues in order to keep learning and pushing myself. This decision has certainly led to countless opportunities that I may not have been able to do otherwise.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?
SS: One thing that is not often understood about a professional artist is the level of training and discipline that is required to even have a CHANCE of being successful. The physical training usually begins when one is quite young (4-6 years old) in order to begin developing the neural pathways and small muscles that are necessary to perform the complex functions inherent in playing a musical instrument. Most professional musicians have the equivalent training and practice as doctors and elite athletes. If you’ve heard of the idea that mastering a skill takes 10,000 hours of practice, most musicians have completed their 10,000 by their mid-teens. And they are still not even close to being fully fledged professional musicians. And yet, the great majority of highly skilled musicians don’t earn even a small fraction as professional scientific and sports people. And we are required to provide our own instruments (many of which cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars), our own concert clothing and other accessories. It is very difficult to earn a living as a full-time professional musician.
JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?
SS: I would eventually like to run a concert series of some sort, probably chamber music. There is so much wonderful music for smaller ensembles that I would love to explore.
The delay is simply being too busy doing other things.
JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?
SS: Tough question. All I can come up with at this point is that I wish I had listened more to my teachers and practiced more diligently when I was young. I have spent too much time subsequent to my youth correcting technical mistakes and playing ‘catch up’ with fundamental issues.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
SS: The single most hopeful thing about the state of the arts currently is that there is now overwhelmingly conclusive evidence of how important the arts are in childhood development, especially studying a musical instrument. Plus, as our society continues to become more automated and ‘robotized’, the arts will become even more critical in the continuing development and evolution of the human spirit and condition.
As for depressing elements of the arts, the push by conservative minded politicians to designate the arts as ‘frivolous’ and ‘expendable’ is robbing more youth of this critical experience in their education.
And even as the arts in general generate much more revenue for the government than it pays out in the form of grants, the perception is that the arts are ‘elitist’ and therefore not eligible for public support. Take the CBC for example – that network used to be a world leader in creative artistic projects, and now it has been gutted to such bare bones that there are almost no resources to produce anything original.
There’s a wonderful quote from Winston Churchill from the Second World War era. When the British parliament was discussing where to siphon money from various departments to help pay for the war effort, eventually the department dealing with the arts and culture budget was under consideration.
Allegedly Churchill said that if this department was cut, then what were they fighting for? The artistic expression of people is what make all of us human.
JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?
SS: I live and breathe music. Fortunately, it has worked out for me that I am involved in many different projects with many different ensembles and organizations. I am constantly challenged by new things to discover, and new people to understand and respond to. As I’ve said earlier, I try to learn from as many experiences as possible. Right now, I have very few predictable or ‘dull’ moments in my musical life.
JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?
SS: Perhaps that I practice what I preach? To be a good leader you must be consistent, reliable, and open to the needs of those that follow your leadership. I have been told that I am very sensitive and conscientious about providing the messages and cues that are helpful to others. I’ve never forgotten that an effective leader must always be HELPFUL.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?
SS: I guess that what surprises me is that I continue to possess a deep drive to keep improving and learning. To what end? I don’t know yet.