The power of fragility
As he begins his Artist in Residence season with Residentie Orkest, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (9 & 11 October), Stefan Jackiw reflects on embracing vulnerability in his playing, stripping away interpretive traditions and navigating social media
You’ve played with the Residentie Orchestra before. What have your impressions been?
They’re lovely people and sound fantastic. They also have a beautiful, fairly new concert hall, the Amare in The Hague. I’ve always enjoyed working with them and I’ve made some friends in the orchestra, so when they asked me to be artist in residence this season, I said yes right away.
I’ll be visiting three times, twice with Jun Märkl. I’ve worked with him a lot over the past few years in different places. We’ve never worked together with the Residentie, but we’ve done concerts with a number of orchestras in the US, and I love working with him. He’s very collaborative, and he has an organic way of making music that lets it breathe naturally. I’m really looking forward to working with him again.
What makes a good conductor from a soloist’s point of view?
First, someone who listens to you. That sounds obvious, but it isn’t always the case. The relationship between the solo violin and orchestra depends on the piece. Sometimes the solo line is quite accompanimental, and the orchestra is symphonic and takes the lead. In the Brahms or Beethoven concertos, for example, the solo violin often accompanies the orchestra. In moments like that, it’s important to have a conductor who listens to the soloist, but also takes a leadership role in shaping the interpretation. That balance is difficult to strike, and Jun Märkl manages it – I can count on him to listen to me, but also to lead and shape the music.
How has violin sound changed since you were a student?
Violin sound is increasingly influenced by historically informed practices, especially in America. To generalise, American violin playing in the 1980s and 1990s focused on a sustained, beautiful singing tone. Now, when I hear professional violinists or top conservatoire students in the US playing Mozart, Bach, Beethoven or Brahms, it’s much more informed by historically accurate playing and articulation traditions of the time. There’s more variety and a wider range of aesthetics in American playing. I’ve never lived in Europe, so I don’t know how European playing has changed over the past 30 years, though.
Where do you see yourself on that spectrum of sound?
When I was young, my teachers in Boston, where I grew up, taught the Russian school, with a strong focus on body and beauty of sound, and a healthy, thick tone. When I was around 17 or 18, I began studying with Donald Weilerstein, who had a different concept. I wouldn’t say it was more tied to historical practice, but he was looking for vulnerability in the sound, not just power, fullness and richness. He talked a lot about fragility of sound at certain moments.
When I stopped taking formal lessons in my early 20s, I listened to a lot of recordings: Isabelle Faust, Christian Tetzlaff, Gidon Kremer. I started performing in Europe and was influenced by musicians I worked with there. I did several projects with Philippe Herreweghe, who is steeped in historical performance practice. Over time, all of that gradually steered me away from the Russian style I knew as a teenager. However, the Russian school gave me a very solid foundation, because it puts so much emphasis on technical accuracy. When I play a heavy concerto, I still rely on some of the ideas about sound production that I learnt when I was young.
Would we hear a difference between the Tchaikovsky you’ll play with the Residentie and the one you used to play?
My idea of the piece has changed a lot. The violin part is heroic in so many areas that it can turn into a warhorse, but the more I think about it and study the score, the more I feel it’s rooted in ballet. There are so many chances for lightness, humour and dance, and moments where I can picture a ballerina doing pirouettes, or leaping from foot to foot. There are heavy, dramatic moments too, of course.
With a piece like the Tchaikovsky, there are so many decades, even centuries, of tradition and interpretive varnish. This great violinist played it this way, that one played it another way. It’s one of those pieces you’ve probably memorised by ear before you learn a single note on the instrument. A lot of the work is stripping away the layers of shellac that have been applied in your ear and trying to separate the way you grew up hearing it from what Tchaikovsky actually asks for in the score. Rather than adding anything, I’m distilling, stripping away.
How do you stay curious about pieces you play so often?
When you revisit these pieces year after year, there can be an urge to think: ‘This is how I think the piece goes and I’m going to try to reproduce the way I played it last year.’ That isn’t necessarily lazy, because you’re still thinking about it, but you end up recreating something you came up with a year ago.
I try to go back to the score. In that process I reexamine and reintegrate what I see, as well as how my taste has changed in the last year. I might come to similar decisions, but sometimes I feel differently about details.
Feeling fresh isn’t hard, though, because there are so many variables. It’s the same piece and I’m the same person, but the conductor, the venue and the orchestra are different. That doesn’t affect my preparation, but when I arrive at the first rehearsal, it can turn things on their head, and make the performance new.
How do you keep in shape technically while travelling?
I have a 20-minute routine of scales, arpeggios and double stops that I do almost every morning. Beyond that, the practice I need to get these pieces ready for performance is enough to keep me in shape. I play a different concerto almost every week, so my technical upkeep has a lot of variety. Two days ago, I played the Brahms Double Concerto, this weekend it’s the Barber, next weekend Mozart’s Fifth, and the weekend after that the Tchaikovsky with the Residentie. Those are very different kinds of violin playing with different technical demands, so preparing them is cross-training in itself. I still do my morning warm-up, though – it’s like doing callisthenics.
You’re a runner. How does that help you?
Running gives me a sense of routine as I move between different locations, hotel rooms and time zones. It’s something steady and stable I can hold on to. I also enjoy seeing a city by running through it, if the weather is reasonable.
I spend so much time sitting on planes or in hotel rooms that moving my body feels good. It’s healthy from a violinistic standpoint, too, because we spend so much time stuck in a fairly asymmetrical position, even though we move around, so it’s healthy to get the blood flowing. I’ve been running for half my life, since before I was 20, and I love it.
How does chamber music support your concerto playing?
I play a lot of chamber music. I have a piano trio, the Junction Trio, with Conrad Tao on piano and Jay Campbell on cello. We formed in 2015. We tour about two weeks a year, but we fit a lot of concerts into those two weeks.
Chamber music is all about listening and responding to what the other players are doing. Playing with Jay and Conrad, I’ve learnt a lot about how to approach particular composers and the role of the performer. We talk about whether our job is to guide the listener; or to embody and experience the music ourselves while the listener is witness to that experience. I don’t think there’s a right answer. Some performers are intensely involved, and you’re watching their experience of the music. Others are more reserved, and you feel they’re leading you through the piece. It’s just a different philosophy of performing.
Conrad and Jay both spend a lot of time with new music, and bring that inquisitive searching to familiar old scores. The way they don’t rely on tradition has taught me so much. For example, the ‘Archduke’ Trio, which we’ve played a lot and which has probably been played hundreds of thousands of times, carries as much tradition as the Tchaikovsky concerto, but Jay and Conrad look at the score as if it were new. What did the composer write, compared with what are we used to hearing? I’ve learnt so much from that.
How has social media changed the relationship between performers and audiences?
Fifty years ago, there was a desire from both artists and audiences for some separation between the star on stage and the audience. There was a mystique to the star. I can’t imagine Jascha Heifetz posting, “Here’s my pre-concert routine!” People appreciated that mystery, but now they are curious about what Beyoncé does when she’s not on stage. That reflects the zeitgeist of our times and how audience tastes have changed.
For me, social media has been a nice way to communicate with my listeners about what I’m thinking and doing. However, I’m not someone who naturally enjoys sharing my everyday professional life, let alone my personal life. It takes me out of the moment. My publicist is always reminding me to post practice videos, but that doesn’t come naturally. I find it inherently performative. You set up the camera and ask yourself, What am I going to practise for my audience? Am I okay with not sounding my best, because that’s the nature of a practice video, or do I want to impress people? There are all these calculations.
I also think there’s a trade-off between my inner and outer lives. I have my private thoughts and the things I focus on in my playing, but when I decide to share them, that focus moves to my outer life and what I’m presenting to other people. The older I get, the more I value my inner life. Some people enjoy sharing on Instagram, but for me, if I’m honest, not so much. I do it because it’s part of my job as someone who performs in public. If I weren’t a professional performer, I’m not sure I’d post on Instagram at all.
How do you feel about younger musicians being online so much?
Social media and YouTube have been amazing for young classical musicians. Before, it was very hard to find other young people who shared your interests, especially outside a big city. You might feel lonely, the one kid at school who's really into the violin. Now, through musicians such as TwoSet Violin, there’s an online community of millions of like-minded young people who love the violin or classical music. Finding community and belonging that way is wonderful.
However, like everyone, I worry that people can be nastier online. Manners, and sometimes kindness, go out the window when comments are anonymous. There are two sides to the coin: the community, and the ugly side that anonymity can bring out.
What are your hopes and fears for classical music, and for the violin in particular?
One thing I hope for, and feel encouraged by, goes back to that mystique of performers from the past. With digital recording and CDs, where you could edit one note at a time, we got perfect recordings. Now you can see Hilary Hahn practising behind the scenes. You see how she’s also working to make something better. That’s wonderful. It can inspire young musicians and remind us that we’re all human, with our own struggles and weaknesses. This humanises violin playing, which is healthy, and could help young violinists to take more risks on stage, and maybe even work harder because, they see how hard their heroes work.
My fear comes from Instagram culture. When I post a clip of something very fast and virtuosic, it gets far more views, likes, reposts and shares than something slow and soulful. It also feels harder now to sit through a 30-minute YouTube video of the Sibelius Violin Concerto than to watch a 30-second clip of a fast section. I feel that myself. I used to watch films on Netflix. Now I can’t sit down for two hours – I watch short videos on Instagram or YouTube.
These bite-sized clips are positive, because they get more people looking at classical music, but they affect our attention spans. A lot of great classical music asks you to sit for 30 minutes or more to enter the composer’s world. I don’t know if it’s a fear, but I’ve noticed it in young people and in myself, and I’m trying to be aware of it and act accordingly.
Stefan Jackiw’s Artist in Residence season with Residentie Orkest includes three visits during the 2026–27 season, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no.2 with Jun Märkl, and Mozart’s Violin Concerto no.3 with Richard Egarr
9 & 11 October 2026 – Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
29 & 31 January 2027 – Mozart Violin Concerto no.3
14 & 16 May 2027 – Prokofiev Violin Concerto no.2
