SFist Interviews Orli Shaham

So what questions does the audience want to be answered? "Many of them had to do about the instrument, and how it works.People who tend to ask most questions tend to be musicians themselves. Also, we got a lot of questions from people who have a child themselves who would like to learn the instrument." There is a definite interest in "collecting travel horror stories from musicians: people who were going to Beirut, people who got stuck overnight, or whose suitcase either made it or did not, people who had to play in their jeans." Audiences like trainwrecks.

We're segueing on the Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, where so many things can go awfully wrong. "It's one of my favorite pieces," she says,"what a masterpiece! You hear it regularly, but to listen to it with a fresh hear is so rewarding. It has all the same bravura and virtuosity that Rachmaninoff pieces always have, but it's also a major work of chamber music, within what is really a huge orchestra work as well."

She laughs when we ask if she likes performing al fresco. "I'm looking forward to it in SF, I'm sure it's going to be a real nice weather." Take a fleece though, Stern Grove might be chilly. "I've had horror stories where the outdoor stage reaches 120 degrees, it's so humid your hands slide off the keys. Sometimes, they make up for that with a little air conditioner, which is invariably located right under the pianist. My right hand is freezing, and my left hand is just too far from the thing! But the idea of playing outdoors is just wonderful. What better way to enjoy music?"

Orli will come with eight month old twins in tow. That's ideal conditions for some travel drama! "I have to say the travel is very exciting. When you travel, when you cross security, typically one collapses the stroller and takes the luggage, and the other takes the baby through. But we have two babies. It's really a circus, people watch us holding their breath." The twins "make it double the work and less than half the sleep". Plus, she has "teenage stepsons who live at home as well." Double whammy, she's our new hero. "I was so happy to be back on stage" after the kids were born, "I always enjoyed playing a great deal, but now I feel that that's my time", emphasis on "my." On the practical side, "I did practice a few time with the baby bjorn." We vacuum like that! Then the babies got so big she could not reach the middle notes.

We were listening to the Mozart in Paris CD that she released, of Mozart violin sonatas with her brother. "It used to be that recitals with Gil were an opportunity for us to see each other. Now it's an opportunity for our kids to see each other!" (Gil has two kids as well). "We love that CD, it's such incredible music. It's a labor of love. It was a very difficult time for Mozart," when he traveled to Paris, "but also very liberating trip." It was his first without his father, and his mother passed away during the trip. "Before his mother died, he was experiencing adulthood in a sense that he had not before, and it was a very fruitful trip musically. It's very difficult obviously to lose a parent, but from an artistic point of view, losing the mother made his music deeper."

"In the E minor sonata, there is a lot of repressed emotions. People say it was written as a response to his mother dying. The facts don't bear it out, it seems it was written before she was sick. But the legend lives on. Still, he almost never used the minor key, only when he wanted to make a specific point."

What are the odds of having two world class musicians in the same family? "Our mother is a geneticist, so we joke that maybe we were an experiment, and maybe it failed." It failed? We're puzzled! She explains: "Our older brother is a scientist, and is very smart, and he's clearly the success." More seriously, she adds "my parents would have been insanely proud of whatever we did. And they view science and music as equally valid career choices." We certainly won't complain about the path these kids followed.