Ravinia 2022, Issue 5

PREVIOUS SPREAD: SIAN RICHARDS THIS PAGE: JACK MITCHELL (PERLMAN/ZUKERMAN); DALE WILCOX (PERLMAN/OUNDJIAN) Perlman entered his life around the same time. Oundjian reached out to philanthropist Ian Stoutz- ker, then-chairman of the Philharmonia Orchestra and an amateur violinist, asking to play for him before auditioning at Juilliard. Stoutzker told the young violinist he was going out of town on a business trip, but could he come over that night? Oundjian didn’t hesitate, traveling from one side of London to the other get there. When he was ushered in, he was amazed to see Perlman in the living room. “So, that’s how I met Itzhak and he was so delightful and so helpful,” Oundjian said. Perlman remembers the encounter and the “obviously very talented” young violinist. “What impressed me about him was, first of all, he is a very nice fellow,” Perlman said. “That always makes a difference to me.” So, Oundjian came to New York with phone numbers of two of his musical heroes. “These, to me,” he said, “were the two most inspiring violinists alive, and I arrived in New York knowing them both some- what, which was incredible.” Perlman told him to call if there were any problems, and there was a hitch right away. He had his heart set on studying with Ivan Galamian, who had been Perlman’s teacher and, who, not coincidentally, was Armenian American, but he was not at his Juilliard audition. In the end, things got sorted out, and Oundjian studied for three years with Galamian. Then after several months of study with Perlman at Brooklyn College, he returned to Juilliard with Perlman’s help to complete his training with Dorothy DeLay, another of the school’s revered teachers at the time. “The important thing is to support young people,” Perlman said, “and give them confidence that they can do things.” Although Oundjian had a trio at the Royal Col- lege of Music and regularly played chamber music with his family, he was intent to prove he could be a soloist. That everyone kept telling him how suited he was to the form only made him more determined. “You know,” he said, “the young ego says, ‘Thank you very much, but I can play the Sibelius Concerto just fine.’ ” He went on to win first prize at an interna- tional violin competition in Viña del Mar, Chile, and obtained representation by the once-prominent artist manager Harold Shaw. But, then, a week after selling out Carnegie Hall, the Tokyo String Quartet invited him to become its first violinist, an offer he couldn’t turn down. “I loved their playing,” he said. “It was unbelievable.” Oundjian joined the group during the same week he graduated from Juilliard in May 1981. He enjoyed enormous success with the quartet, but its grueling schedule—140 concerts a year—be- gan to take its toll on him physically. “The pressure started to build and my hand didn’t feel like it was moving normally,” he said. In October 1993, two of his fingers “collapsed” and he suspected what turned out to be the case: he was suffering from focal dys- tonia, the same condition that forced famed pianist Leon Fleisher to perform with just his left hand for many years. “I knew I had to get off the stage before I was booed off the stage,” Oundjian said. He managed to stay on with the quartet for another one and a half years, helping the group mark its 25th anniversary with performances of the complete set of Beethoven quartets all over the world, finally stepping down in 1995. That same year, Oundjian, who has taught at Yale University since 1981, joined the faculty of the Steans Institute, Ravinia’s nationally known summer training program, where he returned each summer through 1999 and again in 2002, coaching both chamber groups and individual violinists. “I was always intent on teaching these people to play the violin in such a way that nothing would happen to them that happened to me,” he said. Too often, he said, musicians are told to practice intensely with lit- tle thought to the effects on the body. He exhorts his students to use their muscles in the right way and not use more strength than is necessary to accom- plish each movement. “Most musicians who want to do this are not as patient as they might need to be when they are practicing. They try to force them- selves to get to a certain level a little more quickly than they should.” These, to me, were the two most inspiring violinists alive, and I arrived in New York knowing them both somewhat , which was incredible. Right: Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman in 1978, when Peter Oundjian was studying at The Juilliard School with their encouragement. Below: Perlman and Oundjian rehearse Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins for a performance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2012. Then eight years into his tenure as the TSO’s music director, Oundjian remarked that it was his first public violin performance since his retirement from the Tokyo String Quartet. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 15 – AUGUST 28, 2022 8