#23 ‘Gabriel’

Foto: Hans van der Woerd

23.

‘Gabriel’

In a lifetime of playing the violin, the search for the right instrument, a 'partner in sound', is a quite demanding and sometimes nerve-wracking experience. 

I remember the years I spent being unhappy about the type of sound that would come out of the various violins that passed through my hands. I was trying to make them sound different than what they were meant to and I didn’t have the talent to adapt or to make a compromise. Then, at some point, I got a beautiful violin to use, with the sound of butter, ultimately comfortable to touch. When the time came to return it, I was left with a feeling of tremendous loss. 

Playing the violin for me was never a matter of sound only, but rather the physical feeling of what would be the dance and the limit where you touch the bottom of it. It is difficult to explain, but I never looked for the resonant, brilliant violinistic sound. I looked for something that even if you had no hearing you could feel. My ultimate goal was playing one note and make you deeply touched to tears.

Years of struggle and waiting. 

And then, one day, I got a phone call from the Dutch Musical Instruments Foundation and ‘my’ instrument found its way into my life. The moment I saw it and touched it I felt its sound. A violin resonates even only by having it in your hands. When you hold its neck it already speaks. As you lift it and place it under your chin, you feel the weight of its soul and character. Either it is a wooden object you have under your chin, or it complements your body and becomes your voice. When I stroke my bow over the strings a velvety dark and confident sound comes to life. It was the sound I wished all my life I would produce had I been a singer. It transcends a sound of a violin and in its confident timbre is ready to go into battle, to comfort you, to make you excited, to scare you, to hush you into sleep, to make you feel the power of the sound resonating in your bones. It is a violin which if you dare to push a bit too far will open for more. I said yes immediately, feeling greatly honoured to have a chance to dance with such a special instrument in a deep dark mysterious sound.

That same violin in Louis’ hands, back in 1939 on a Palm Sunday, expressed the sorrow of the world, together with an alto singer and the legendary Maestro Mengelberg in the Big hall of the famous Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. ‘Erbarme dich, mein Gott’ they lament together. They are asking God to have mercy on them. Doesn’t he see that they are weeping… A tradition deeply rooted in the Dutch culture. Year after a year. Repeating and remembering the drama of the crucifixion and nature of mankind. 

A little boy is sitting in the audience with his parents on that occasion. He is ten years old, they still call him Herman and his violin teacher advised it was about time he would attend his first Matthäus-Passion by Bach. He is listening to the aria and notices a woman close to him in the audience break into tears. He instantly finds his calling in life. Sound. Emotion. Tears. ‘If sound can do something like this, touch somebody to tears, I want to do that', he thinks to himself.

The boy starts his journey from that moment on. He struggles and completes his violin education, ends up at the last desk of the second violins of the orchestra of the Dutch Radio where I will get a job sixty years later myself. He is a dreamer. He has fire in his heart and wants to conduct. He starts humble conducting lessons and courses. One thing leads to another and he gets a chance to step in as an emergency substitute for a conductor who has taken ill. Cherubinis’ Requiem. From there on there is no way back!

He takes off and flies on a path of struggle, emotions and ultimately the highest tides of world fame and achievement. He becomes Bernard Haitink. He becomes a legend of the conducting world. He becomes a chief conductor and later the Patron of the orchestra he stood up from the last stand of the second violins where I still hold a job in. 

The violin I play, the Angel of his path in life that whispered into his young soul and made him inspired to become a musician, meet without knowing at the very end of his career yet again. I played under his baton some of my favourite works of Bruckner and Mahler and so did the J.B.V. ‘Ex - Louis Zimmermann’ in my hands. 

Only some years later, watching a documentary about Bernard Haitink, 'The Enigmatic Maestro’, I make a connection and realise that the beautiful wooden box, ‘my’ violin, carries the sound of the messenger of God, Gabriel.

What are the odds?! 

The only thing we still don’t know is, what the woman in the audience cried about on that Sunday eighty-two years ago.