IT WAS not the usual gig, but it was a gig, albeit one featuring one of the finest – and probably most loved – violin virtuosos in the world. Poland wanted to celebrate its presidency of the Council of the European Union, and what better way than with music.
Former child prodigy and passionate Aston Villa supporter Nigel Kennedy, artistic director of the Polish Chamber Orchestra, is now based for part of the year in Poland, where he lives with his Polish wife.
Since 2003, he has been performing with Kroke, a band that mixes traditional Eastern European Jewish melodies with folk tunes. Most of all though, Kroke believes in jazz improvising, and few great musicians enjoy improvisation quite as much as Kennedy, well aware that his hero, JS Bach, virtually invented the practice, as any jazz musician will confirm.
On this coming Saturday night, the venerable roof of London’s Royal Albert Hall will no doubt be lifted with applause and general joy as this year’s Proms audience rise to the glorious sound of Nigel Kennedy performing Bach’s solo violin works.
The audience at the National Concert Hall in Dublin last week robustly demonstrated its regard for Kennedy and Kroke with a series of standing ovations that delighted a gleeful superstar who appears far younger than his 54½ years. The concert was sold out and, just as Kennedy has proved a tremendous ambassador for classical music, he must be applauded for singlehandedly introducing Kroke and Polish music to a growing listenership.
Why is he so good? Aside from the thrilling gift that caused Yehudi Menuhin to repeatedly describe Kennedy as the most talented young player he had ever heard, and that his grandfather, Lauri Kennedy, was principal cello with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and later with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and performed with Fritz Kreisler, one of Kennedy’s heroes whose work he has also recorded, Kennedy has a huge advantage over most elite classical artists, he loves all forms of music – and he excels at performing for an audience.
On the stage of the concert hall he exuded playful humour and, most importantly, consistent generosity to his fellow performers. There was no doubt that many of the fans who had made their way to the concert were more than familiar with Kennedy's distinguished recording repertoire, which includes outstanding versions of Beethoven's Violin Concerto(1806), ranging from Kennedy's live performance in Kiel in 1992, under the great German conductor Klaus Tennstedt, to Kennedy's 2008 recording with the Polish Chamber Orchestra, which he conducted. Kennedy also recorded the Brahms Violin Concerto, while as long ago as 1988, he released his interpretation of Sibelius's Concerto, often referred to as unplayable, which explains why Sibelius wrote it twice, amending his 1903 version in 1907. In 2002 Kennedy performed four wonderful Bach programmes on tour with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, in Cork, Limerick, Dublin and Dingle.
Last Wednesday was Poland's night, so perhaps it was not an evening to expect a little Bach from Kennedy, although even Air on the G Stringwould have been welcome or perhaps he might have tossed in his subtle rendition of Vaughan Williams's impressionistic The Lark Ascending?Instead he was at one with the band and introduced a charming lullaby written by Kroke accordionist Jerzy Bawol, for Bawol's daughter Kamila.
Kennedy was happy, enjoying himself and in his way thanking Poland, a country that has certainly adopted him. And within days of the sad, unnecessary death of Amy Winehouse, it was difficult not to remember that Kennedy too, has had his share of hardship, mainly through a music establishment attempting to stifle his flair. Precocious genius usually has a price. Kennedy is a likeable maverick, affable and charming, but beyond the little jokes and the boyish carry-on, he is very serious, devastatingly knowledgeable about music and sufficiently overwhelmed by various pressures that he retired from the classical concert platform in 1992, just after that magnificent live Beethoven Concertoperformance – and remained away for five years, a sizeable chunk out of any performer's career.
On his return he decided to drop "Nigel" and answer only to "Kennedy" – he has since been reunited with his first name. His return in 1997 saw him playing a programme of Bach, Bartok and Jimi Hendrix. It was as if he had never been away, Kennedy's sabbatical did not affect his fabulous, extremely physical and disciplined technique. He returned to Elgar's Violin Concertoand recorded it under Simon Rattle, having first recorded it, 13 years earlier, in 1984, as a baby-faced 28 year old. He has always been his own man, and had to use extreme ways of articulating this. He was born to a middle-class couple in Brighton in 1956 and his mother, a piano teacher, raised him on her own until she remarried.
Kennedy began playing the piano at five, but before he was seven he discovered the violin and won a scholarship to the Yehudi Menuhin School for Gifted Children. His mother’s new husband introduced an exciting new discovery – jazz.
Through Menuhin, Kennedy met jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. They became instant friends. Kennedy at 16 won another scholarship, this time to the famous Julliard School in New York. There he began busking on the streets. His friendship with Grappelli and his interest in jazz were frowned upon by establishment teachers on his return to England.
Kennedy at 21 was about to be groomed to become a British violinist, at a time when violinists tended to come from Eastern Europe or the US. No wonder Kennedy opted for rebellion. As long ago as 1986 he had the artistic temerity to record Duke Ellington's Mainly Blackwith Bartok's dramatic Sonata for Solo Violin. In that same year he began work on the recording that would on its release in March 1989 made him and a certain Antonio Vivaldi very famous – The Four Seasons. It quickly sold more than two million copies and has haunted Kennedy. Still, he loves the music of Vivaldi and has explored it with the Berlin Philharmonic. He has immense rapport with Vivaldi, who obviously shared Kennedy's love for music, his fellow musicians and the audience.