Charles Pikler Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Violist / Violinist Charles Pikler

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Charles Pikler joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a first violinist and, in 1986, he was named principal violist. Upon his retirement in October 2017, he received the Theodore Thomas Medallion for Distinguished Service.

Pikler studied the piano with his parents and violin with Ben Ornstein, Bronislaw Gimpel at the University of Connecticut and Roman Totenberg at the Tanglewood Young Artist Program at the Berkshire Music Center. While a student, he appeared as soloist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Eastern Connecticut Symphony and Manchester Civic Orchestra (CT), among others. In addition, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics with Honors from the University of Minnesota.

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He launched his musical career as a violinist with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1971, later becoming a member of the Cleveland Orchestra (1974 to 1976) and the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1976 to 1978). In 1978, at the invitation of Sir Georg Solti, Mr. Pikler became a member of the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Following the retirement of the longtime principal violist Milton Preves, Pikler was named his successor in 1986, as the Prince Charitable Trust Chair, eventually becoming the Paul Hindemith Principal Viola Endowed Chair. [Photo at left with Leonard Bernstein.]

Pikler has been featured as a soloist with the CSO under Sir Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim, as well as with other titled and guest conductors such as Sir Andrew Davis, Pierre Boulez, Harry Bicket, Charles Dutoit, Sir Mark Elder, Dennis Russell Davies, Asher Fisch, Nicholas McGegan, and James Levine. Additionally, he has also been soloist with the Kingsport Tennessee Symphony, Orchestra of the Pines in Nacogdoches, Texas, National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica and National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.

Pikler served as concertmaster of the Chicago Chamber Orchestra under Dieter Kober, touring with it and also performing as soloist on over more than 70 occasions; the Sinfonia Orchestra of Chicago under Barry Faldner; the Orchestra of the Apollo Chorus; the Chicago Opera Theater Orchestra; the Northbrook Symphony under Samuel Magad and Lawrence Rapchak; and the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest under Jay Friedman. He served as principal violist of the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra under Alan Heatherington. In addition, he was principal viola of the Ravinia Festival Orchestra and guest conducted the Chicago Chamber Orchestra several times.

A chamber music enthusiast, he has performed with several ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony String Quartet and the Tononi Ensemble with pianist Susan Merdinger. Pikler has been a guest artist with the Daniel String Quartet in Holland, the Vermeer Quartet of De Kalb, and the Louisville String Quartet. In 1990, he performed Frank Beezhold’s Viola Concerto, which was composed for and dedicated to him, with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago at Orchestra Hall. He also has recorded it in the composer’s own transcription for piano and viola with Dorothy Shultz.

He has recorded Easley Blackwood’s chamber music with the composer for Cedille Records. He was featured as soloist on the Sewanee Symphony’s 2003 recording of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy for Solo Viola and Orchestra, with Victor Yampolsky conducting. In 1995 and 1996, he served as guest principal violist for the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa and was a guest violist at the Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockland, Maine. Pikler participates in the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. While on sabbatical from the CSO during the 2014–15 season, Pikler performed as a substitute section violist at the Lyric Opera of Chicago for two operas by Strauss and Wagner.

Mr. Pikler served on the faculty of Northwestern University, North Park University, Northeastern Illinois University, Wheaton College and the American Conservatory of Music. He coached the violists of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, as well as other ensembles at the Midwest Young Artists program in Highwood, Illinois. Pikler is the founder and music director of I Solisti, a chamber orchestra which is part of the Midwest Young Artists program. Pikler has taught or given Master Classes at prestigious universities, conservatories and music festivals such as Eastman School of Music, University of Missouri - Kansas City, Sewanee Music Festival, and others.

Pikler and his wife, Ruth, have two sons, David, a Math teacher in Houston's prestigious Village School, and Andrew, a software engineer in Tel Aviv, Israel, and a daughter, Amy, a violist with the San Antonio Symphony and soon to be member of the Utah Symphony.

During retirement, Pikler is completing a massive archival recording project he started in 1999, namely a remastering of the recordings of his late professor Bronislaw Gimpel.

== Biography and photo from Pickler’s official website.
== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

As with other members of the Chicago Symphony whom I have had the pleasure of interviewing, Charles Pikler agreed to meet with me in a rehearsal room at Orchestra Hall before a concert. Our conversation was free-flowing and informative, and he gladly shared his thorough knowledge of both the repertoire and his instrument.

Portions of the chat were used on the radio several times, and now I am pleased to present the entire encounter . . . . .

Bruce Duffie:   You started out as a violinist...

Charles Pikler:   Yes. I joined the Chicago Symphony in 1978, and before that I was in Rotterdam, Cleveland, and Minneapolis.

BD:   You continue to play violin, so you didn’t just switch to viola. Is it easy to go back and forth?

Pikler:   I played both the violin and viola then, so it was never a switch.

BD:   Do you enjoy the fact that now you are leading the viola section rather than sitting in the violin section?

Pikler:   Yes, I do. [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Ray Still, John Bruce Yeh, Morton Gould, Herbert Blomstedt, Neeme Järvi, and Erich Leinsdorf.]

BD:   You get all the incidental viola solos. Is it good to be sitting right under the conductor’s nose to be able to play those solos right for him or her?

Pikler:   It depends on the conductor.

BD:   You continue to play both violin and viola. Aside from the finger position and opening it up a little bit, what is the basic difference, or what are the differences between the two instruments?

Pikler:   It’s a different timbre, and it’s a different function in the orchestra. Actually, the second violin has a different function in the orchestra than the first violin. So, even though the instruments are the same, the method that you play the second violin part is much different.

BD:   It’s a mental thing?

Pikler:   Yes, but it’s not just mental as much as it’s a different voice. It’s like an alto in a chorus. It serves a harmony function. It’s not a leading function, but more of a subordinate function. The viola has that in common with the second violin, but of course it’s a different instrument, and it goes lower. Also, it depends on the piece you’re playing. Sometimes the viola part goes very much with the cello, so you’re very much a lower string. Then, sometimes you go with the second violins, and sometimes you go even with the first violins. If the composer’s written something in octaves, then he’s ran out of the notes to put them into the second violin, and we get the lower notes.

BD:   So, aside from switching back and forth from violin to viola, the switch is back and forth from the high range to the low range or the high thought to the low thought.

Pikler:   That’s correct. Plus, the vibrato is a little different.

BD:   How so?

Pikler:   It’s a little slower. You want to get the darker sound. The viola has a very interesting phenomena compared to a violin, in that it blends with everything and cuts for nothing. It’s exactly the opposite from a piccolo, which cuts through everything and is very difficult to blend with anything. That’s why very few viola concertos can really be pulled off, because you’re in a range that is very difficult to balance compared to the orchestra. It will blend with the orchestra, and that’s not what you want from a concerto. You want the solo instrument to dominate.

BD:   On the big famous viola concertos — the Berlioz, or the Walton — did the composers orchestrate it well so that it does show off the viola?

Pikler:   Believe it or not, I think the best one is the Hindemith Schwanendreher, because he’s gotten rid of the violins and violas in the orchestra. So, you’re the highest string. Then he’s orchestrated for twenty-one players. The only instruments that are anything like the viola are the four cellos, and the bases are not much like the viola in that particular piece. You have two flutes (one doubling piccolo), oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, harp, four cellos and three basses, so it’s a smaller constitution of players. It’s not a full-size orchestra, whereas in the Walton and Bartók concertos, there are spots that are very difficult to play out, and it takes a very skilled conductor to pull the orchestra down.

BD:   Is this partly a tribute to Hindemith because he was a violist originally, and he understood it?

Pikler:   Not only because he was a violist, but he was very accomplished on almost all the instruments. He wrote a sonata for just about every instrument, and he knew enough about the instruments that he could play any piece that he wrote. And remember, he didn’t write easy music.

* * * * *

BD: The viola is, unfortunately, the butt of a lot of jokes. Do you have a stash of violin jokes to counter them?

Pikler: There are violin jokes that you can throw back at them, but actually, thirty-five years ago there were very few really good violists. There was William Primrose, and Paul Hindemith, and Milton Katims, and my predecessor, Milton Preves, was a wonderful, wonderful violist. My counterpart in Boston, Burton Fine, was a wonderful violist, but the number of violists on that level were very few, and most of them didn’t play in orchestras. [Like Pikler, Fine also started on violin in Boston, before becoming Principal Viola.] You had an enormous difference between the way they played, and the other viola players because they weren’t accomplished for some reason. Anyone who played the violin and didn’t quite make it on the violin could be given a viola, and some of them could sound better than the violists who were not skilled on the violin. But nowadays, I have a class of students at Northwestern, in my orchestra repertoire class, and many of them play a lot of the viola. Some are all over the country, and even all over the world.
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BD:   As we’re heading into the new millennium, can we assume that the viola sections are going to be mostly top-flight violists? They may not be world-class soloists, but they’re going to be really good violists?

Pikler:   Yes. Nobody gets a job on the viola because they’re not good enough to play in the violin section, so they’ll try the viola. Many violinists who have not gotten places on the violin, have tried, and they find that it’s harder to get a place on the viola.

BD:   What advice do you have for someone who wants to get an orchestra job as a violist?

Pikler:   Advice goes beyond just being a violist, as it does on any instrument. Now, it is very difficult to get an orchestra job on any instrument because there’s so many candidates, and there’s very few positions.

BD:   I’m sure that a lot of these candidates play technically well. Do they also play musically well?

Pikler:   This is maybe a bit hard-boiled, but nevertheless it is my genuine opinion. If you look back at the artists that were around sixty to seventy years ago, or even forty years ago, I honestly believe there were just more beautiful, genuine players. I’m talking about the topnotch ones, not the ones auditioning for a section of an orchestra. I attribute it to the computer, because in those days you didn’t have a computer, and many of them today play their instruments like they’re playing the keyboard of a computer. But on the other hand, the way they can technically play the notes is probably much better than the way it was 40-50 years ago.

BD:   I assume that you have strived to be as musical as possible in all of your playing.

Pikler:   Yes, I still do. I try to keep in mind the artists that I’ve worked with in the past, including my late teacher Bronislaw Gimpel, whom I talk a lot about, but even others. If I have a hobby, it’s doing research on Gimpel. I think he was just the greatest musician that I had ever, ever encountered.

BD:   Whenever you mention his name, there’s a love there.

Pikler: Yes, certainly. I also remember working more fondly with Solti in the Chicago Symphony, and with other old-time conductors such as István Kertész, or Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, or Günter Wand. I’m always trying to remember what they taught me, and try to put it to use.

BD:   Then part of the legacy of this orchestra is you, and what you’ve brought from all of your experience.

Pikler:   I try to bring the experiences from the past, and still I’m talking about Solti and Bronislaw Gimpel to my students all the time. I try to think of what musicians of that caliber would have thought about a phrase in a piece which we were working on at the moment. Sometimes, if it were an orchestra piece, I would know because I would have worked it with them, but if we’re working a piece that I didn’t encounter with them, then I would just conjecture.

BD:   You’re on your own.

Pikler:   Yes, then I would be on my own.

* * * * *

BD:   You’ve got some new music coming out by Easley Blackwood. He’s a legendary Chicago composer. Does he write well for the viola?

Pikler:   Yes, he does because he’s a student of Paul Hindemith. Also, he does play the viola. I wouldn’t say real well, but he plays it.

BD:   So, he understands it.

Pikler:   Yes. He doesn’t claim to play it well, but he can pick it up and play it, or bow in a similar way a string technician can do it when they’re adjusting to the instrument. Plus, when he writes something down, he can certainly imagine the bowing and the choice of fingerings, and whether a pitch can be played in double-stop with another pitch, and what fingering it takes to do it on which two strings. He even wrote a chord for me in his Second Viola Sonata which required the thumb on low C-sharp.

BD:   Curling around?

Pikler:   Yes, curling it around on the low C, because you needed the first finger to play the B-flat on the A string. There’s no way you can be on the A string with the first finger, and be across on the C string at the same time.

BD:   Did he know this, or did he ask you if it was possible?

Pikler:   I requested a chord like that, but I didn’t request that particular one, so he found an opportunity to use it. He found a chord that needed a low C-sharp and a B-flat on the octave, plus whatever it would require those two notes. He could put the notes in the piano, and he said I could put it back in the piano if I couldn’t do it, but I said I could do it.

BD:   So, it becomes a point of pride to accomplish it?

Pikler:   Yes, right. There are also open fifths in triplets in the Stravinsky Firebird ballet, and it’s absolutely impossible to play with any other finger than to just lay your thumb across the 3 notes. But that’s very easy because you have time to find it. Then when you do it, you put the thumb down there and it’s repeated a lot.

BD:   So, you get the whole section then to do it?

Pikler:   Actually, only half the section because it’s in the divisi. We recently played a piece here in Chicago by Esa-Pekka Salonen, and he brought his parts from Los Angeles that use the thumb.

BD:   He knew what to do with it.

Pikler:   Yes.

* * * * *

BD:   As the section leader, is it your responsibility to make sure that the whole section plays well, and plays exactly the same?

Pikler:   That’s a very touchy point to try to legislate to a bunch of violists that are as good as the ones in the Chicago Symphony. We don’t have anyone in the viola section that is just being pulled along, and it’s certainly true in the whole orchestra. We have fourteen good viola players, and it doesn’t matter what order you sit them, or how you put them together. There’s a variation in style, and the way people feel about the music, but there’s nobody that can’t play. It’s my responsibility to unify the style.

BD:   A couple times I’ve seen you downstairs marking parts.

Pikler:   I have to mark parts. Somebody has to mark bowings and dynamics. You can’t just play the piece from a blank part, which is only the notes. There’d be too many opinions, because the composers, especially when you go back to Beethoven and even before him to Mozart, Haydn, and Bach, they wrote only very sketchy codes in music, and it’s up to you to read between the lines. Beethoven was the one that invented the preventative dynamics — sempre pianissimo, sempre fortissimo [always very soft, always very loud] — which I don’t believe were seen before Beethoven. Then, if one has the inkling to make a crescendo, the sempre pianissimo negates that. Likewise, sempre fortissimo means that if you think you might want to make a nuance in a diminuendo, don’t do it. That’s the point of that dynamic. So, Beethoven tried to be firm with some of the ambiguities, and that’s where it started.

BD:   Of course, he was lucky in his orchestras just to have people who could get around their instruments.

Pikler:   Yes. Nobody knows what the orchestras played like in those days. I hear stories that the Vienna Philharmonic originally claimed that the Great C Major Symphony of Schubert was impossible to play. Now there isn’t a major orchestra in the world that can’t play it, so there must be some improvement.

BD:   It seems like we keep getting that in everything. A very difficult concerto from 20 years ago, that only a couple of people could play, is now a college or even a high school test piece.

Pikler:   Actually, violin technique was very, very, very perfected in the 1920s-1930s. My own teacher, Bronislaw Gimpel, premiered the second version of the Benjamin Britten Concerto. If you ask me to name solo violinists today that could play that concerto, I don’t think I could. But he was able to play it in 1951. So, I don’t really think that it’s really the technique that’s improved. It’s just the number of people that are up to a certain standard has grown. Actually, as to the technical standard, there’s more people that have reached that standard, and fewer people that have reached a musical standard like Arthur Rubenstein. That’s a very high musical standard, although I really can’t say that his technique, or that of Horowitz was less good than the best pianist today. Personally, I think the problem with the young — and really we’re all victims of it, including myself — is the darn computer. The computer is played with a keyboard, and you just press buttons with no nuance. You don’t have to be skilled to know which buttons to press. Quite frankly, I don’t use a computer.

BD:   We certainly will make sure that you don’t get a piece that is for viola and computer.

Pikler:   Actually, I would play it, though I wouldn’t play it on a computer. I’d find a way around it, or make a variation in the way it plays. My philosophy is that I still try to look back to the era before the computer. Believe it or not, thirty-five years ago I was using a computer, which I’m not using today. You had to be very artistic with the old IBM computers, the ones in the 1960s.

BD:   Oh, with the punch cards?

Pikler:   With the punch cards.

BD:   I remember when I had to do my flowcharts, and I had to put all the lines on the cards.

Pikler:   A flowchart would give you some sort of a mathematical algorithm, and it required some sort of integrity and artistry too. Fortran was considered very, very modern compared to the machine language.

BD:   That’s right. Here we are, a couple of dinosaurs.

Pikler:   [Laughs] But today, every little kid in every class does things on the computer. Many of them cannot even write beautifully because they learned how to write on the computers, without handwriting or penmanship.

BD:   When you play the viola, do you know that you’re going to be performing for generations of computer users? Does that enter into your thinking at all?

Pikler:   No. I play for myself, and I play the way I think the music is supposed to go. If they don’t like it, then I guess they shouldn’t come.

BD:   [Gently protesting] We want to get more audience, don’t we?

Pikler:   Yes. I try to reach them in a way other than the way the machines will reach them.

BD:   We’re dancing around it, so let me ask the real easy question. What’s the purpose of music?

Pikler:   To express something that can’t be expressed in words, or in painting, or in any other form of the performing arts. That’s probably true with any of the performing arts, or any visual art. Even in painting you express something. What’s the point of doing your painting if they can get a camera and take a picture? Why should Monet paint? The reason why the photo is not a replacement for Monet’s painting is because it expresses a certain feeling from the artist. It’s very strange because somebody can copy something, but it’s not the same. Everything is perfect about it, but it’s just not the same. I try to feel when I’m performing. I try to figure out the music, especially if I’m performing a piece from a master from 200 or 250 years ago, such as Mozart, or Beethoven, or Bach. They left nothing but just sketches of what they really felt, and it’s up to you to look at it, and try to decipher what was really going on in their mind and in their heart when they wrote it down, and try to bring that to life. Erich Leinsdorf did that with his book The Composer’s Advocate. He says that as the musician, you are the attorney presenting this composer’s piece, and trying to ‘sell’ it, for lack of another better word. [Pauses for a moment] I neglected to say earlier, when you look into Mahler or Berg and you see a sixteenth note, there’s five or six different instructions on what to do.

BD:   Does that much information ever take away your spontaneity and your creativity?

Pikler:   Sometimes it’s a little too controlling. I used to think composers should really describe what they want and write it all in there. However, Mahler will write terms in his symphonies that really aren’t so necessary. He was probably not getting what he wanted from his orchestras that he was conducting. So, he must have thought, “The more I write...” But what he neglected to realize was that somebody had to read it as it went along, and you can’t read everything and read the notes, too. So, something suffers. Ultimately, it’s the person playing the piece that has to understand what they’re playing, and there’s only so much you can actually write into the music.

* * * * *

BD: Let me ask you about another of your old friends, Frank Beezhold.

Pikler: Frank Beezhold was a violinist that worked with me in the Chicago Chamber Orchestra. That was Dieter Kober’s orchestra. Beezhold was also a concert master at the Seattle Symphony under Milton Katims. He had a position at Northern Illinois University to teach violin. He wrote three string concertos — one for violin, one for viola, and one for cello. The one for violin was dedicated to the Becker Violin Shop, and the one for cello was dedicated to Marc Johnson, who was in the Vermeer Quartet. The viola concerto was written for me, and I played it with the Chicago Civic Orchestra not that long ago.

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BD:   Then you also recorded it in a version for piano?

Pikler:   For piano, yes.

BD:   Was it special for you to record this particular work?

Pikler:   Yes, because it was a very touching story. He composed it as I became the Principal Violist, and I was very busy at that time trying to learn viola parts. Remember, at that time, everything that went on the stand I was playing for the first or second time, because I had played violin in the orchestra prior to that, and never held a viola position. He waited for several months for an appointment with me, because I just couldn’t find the time to try to get together with him. After he played it for me, I was very touched by the piece because it is a very musical concerto. It wasn’t just a bunch of notes. It had a definite message. He took it out, and he wrote a dedication to me, and I was very touched by it. Then it took roughly three years until I finally took the time to learn it. Unfortunately, he never heard the performance because he died, but he did hear me rehearsing it.

BD:   His spirit was there.

Pikler:   Yes, hopefully.

BD:   Hopefully. Yes. Now, there’s not nearly as much repertoire for viola as there is for the violin. Is there enough? Should you encourage more repertoire for the solo viola?

Pikler:   I think there is a considerable amount. There are (seven) sonatas by Hindemith (1919-1939) and Shostakovich (1975), and there are concertos by Bartók (1945), Walton (1929), and Walter Piston (1957). I never played that. The romantic period has very few works for viola. There’s of course the Harold en Italie, and then the two Brahms sonatas, which are Brahms’ transcriptions of his clarinet sonatas. The problem is that encouraging young composers to write for the viola, if they don’t write something that is worth playing, then it’s not a contribution. There’s enough to make recitals, but if one wants to be a violist, one does not want to be just a soloist. They want to do something other than solo work on that instrument.

BD:   Chamber music?

Pikler:   Chamber music, and possibly to teach the instrument, and work in an orchestra. You find so few viola soloists because of that.

BD:   I can only think of a few... There’s Yuri Bashmet, who’s taken up conducting, and Marcus Thompson has made some recordings, and Kim Kashkashian...

Pikler:   She’s playing chamber music, and also teaching. But for one who is just a performer, we don’t have any young violists that all they do is play concertos.

BD:   Should we?

Pikler:   I don’t think so. It’s not that type of an instrument. It’s an instrument that blends with everything and cuts through nothing. It’s got that kind of a voice.

BD:   In the end, is it worth it playing the viola?

Pikler:   Yes, if you play the best music written. I certainly think Der Schwanendreher is worth playing. I think the Brahms sonatas are worth playing, especially the second one. But from a marketability standpoint, you’re just not going to be able to have a career on them. There’s not enough literature for it. It’s just not that kind of an instrument. You’re not going to have a solo career on the trombone either. It’s just not that kind of an instrument. It belongs in an orchestra. [The only trombonist in the world who tours as a soloist is Christian Lindberg.] There are works that can be played on it from a solo point of view, but the two major instruments that are for solo are violin and piano. Then there comes the cello, and maybe to some degree perhaps a flute, or a trumpet, or an oboe.

BD:   The viola is way down the list?

Pikler:   The viola is just not going to be popular in that way. One plays the viola to be able to participate in the quartets of Brahms and Beethoven, or even in the Beethoven string trios, and that kind of literature. One is not trying to learn twenty-five concertos, and go from orchestra or orchestra trying to perform them. That’s not the purpose of the instrument.

BD:   Are you at the point in your career you want to be right now?

Pikler:   Yes, I suppose. I’ve still got twenty-seven more years to make it to Milton Preves, who was with the Orchestra for fifty-two years [forty-seven as Principal]. I can’t say exactly how much longer I will play. I’m still playing well enough to do the parts, and I still like to play. I really do like playing orchestra parts, and I like working with students. It’s my life, so I do it. [Pikler would retire in 2017 after thirty-nine years with the Orchestra, twenty-one as Principal.]

BD:   I wish you lots of continued success.

Pikler:   Thank you.

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This conversation was recorded in a rehearsal room backstage at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, on May 15, 2003. Portions were broadcast on WNUR in 2005 and 2013, and on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio in 2005 and 2008. This transcription was made in 2022, and posted on this website at that time.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.