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Meet Rising Star Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu |
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Home > What's New > Caramoor Blog > Meet Rising Star Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu
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October 21, 2010
“Here is the third installment of our eight part series, Meet the Rising Stars. Cindy talks a lot about the experiences she’s had traveling and working with students, and she provides great insight into the world of classical music-making. I hope you enjoy meeting violinist and violist, Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu!” – Alison Shearer
 | | Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violin |
Age: 25
Place of Birth: Taipei, Taiwan
In 2009 you were invited to work with the Orion String Quartet as a guest. Can you describe what that experience was like?
The members of the Orion Quartet were all musicians I have known well and admired greatly for a long time before having the privilege to work with them as a guest violist. Steve Tenenbom, violist of Orion Quartet, was one of my most influential mentors in chamber music playing. That’s why the experience to me was much more than rehearsing, playing concerts, and eating good Taiwanese food. As a young chamber musician today, I have always been fascinated by the talks of those legendary figures like Felix Galimir, Alexander Schneider, and Sandor Vegh, etc, who were some of the biggest influences on Orion Quartet.
When Steve talks about Felix Galimir, it is always accompanied with an impersonation of (from the way I interpreted it) some grumpy, complain-y person who waves his bow around as he talks, who however cares more than anything about finding ways to make the music more beautiful, often by being more raw, rough, or aggressive. He tries to demonstrate whatever the music is expressing.
In a way, since I worked with them so closely, I got a different view of the incessant searching and exploring that is at the heart of music making. As I sat among them, I saw how each of them processed things from something like bow distribution, articulation, to the emotional arc of a movement play-through. I felt like I should be pinching myself; I was seeing, hearing, and feeling where all the magic of that kind of playing came from— how it all continues to be recreated, reinvented, refined, and explored. It humbled me and reassured me of the kind of musician that I’ve wanted to continue to pursue becoming.
The trip was short and sweet, but the fruitfulness made my heart (and apparently all of our stomachs) very full.
Do you enjoy all of the traveling that your musical career has allowed you to do? Do you find it stressful?
I absolutely love traveling.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love bad traffic, delayed flights, bad weather, all the things normal people don’t love. But traveling is just so refreshing.
Isn’t that just totally the plus side of being a musician? Really. To be able to experience the different feel, scenery, smell of the air, and of course the different food, culture, and people of each place, city, and country. Though it’s going to sound SO cliché, I can feel my imagination broadening from the experiences I’ve had traveling. There are some things you just can’t appreciate until you’ve experienced them in person (to be even MORE cliché) like sipping a good latte at an outside table in Paris, standing in the middle of the busiest intersection in Tokyo, a sunny day at the beach of La Jolla Shore, or an incense-filled Taoist Temple in Taiwan.
I guess my imagination also doesn’t exclude the ugly and the unexpected... exhaustion, bad weather, schedule change, getting lost, not being able to find an open restaurant... No doubt it is stressful at times, but sometimes when I just think about how it “builds character” and that all stress and frustration will contribute to the depth of my music, that that alone, makes me love it. :)
Well, all joking aside, traveling is overall very enriching.
This fall you began teaching as an adjunct at the Thornton School of Music. For you, how does teaching compare to performing?
To be honest, I never thought I would start teaching so seriously at my age. I’ve always thought I would keep focusing solely on playing for a while after school, but the opportunity came up. Since it is not a huge load of teaching, it still allows me to pursue other areas in music.
I actually have had quite some opportunities in the past to work with people in master classes and coach musicians of all different levels and ages in chamber music. I have always had a blast.
To compare teaching and performing... let’s just say, there’s nothing in music that is not interrelated. Many of my teachers used to tell me that teaching reminds you of what is important when you play or work on something, because you are telling your students what you yourself have always done. Now I am experiencing that first-hand. Now when I practice and perform, I focus more than ever on the fundamentals of technique, translating the expressions into my left and right hands, good posture, eliminating tension, and keeping my imagination open to make the music more beautiful... All of the things that I’m stuffing my students with.
Why is classical music still relevant today?
I believe that classical music will always be relevant.
Music in general creates a groove, delivers some kind of message, and portrays expressions. Music will always represent the same things that human beings want to say, just in different languages. It will always be about, love, beautiful sceneries, sex, more about love, religion, history, and the composers’ life stories, which is, well, pretty much always about love too.
It will always be relevant because it is about the same things people relate to in life experiences. However, it also in some ways is not nor will ever be relevant enough. Because art will never stop being created, the language that delivers the message will keep evolving with time and inspirations that are more current. That’s why, even if master pieces like the Schubert Cello Quintet, Beethoven Quartets Op. 130 and 132, Mendelssohn Octet, just to name a few, will forever be some of the greatest artworks ever born, they will never again represent our most current form of expression.
However, is being “relevant” an issue with classical music? Maybe it is in a way for part of the general public. But, being a passionate classical music lover myself, more so even than being a performing musician, I feel I’m at peace with this issue, for I am meeting and seeing people who have such love for classical music the same way I do all the time and everywhere. Probably because it is inevitable to fall in love and be affected by these pieces despite of the language; there is no “relevant” but just that familiar and one-of-a-kind feeling that pulls on your heartstrings— an absolutely wonderful feeling that some of us can never get enough of.
What inspires you?
I find everything in music and my experiences in music inspiring. I already discusses the inspiration that experience brings; but music itself—the compositions, how musicians process on each piece, the stories about musicians and the things that happen that will become stories to pass on— everything in music to me is an endless world of inspiration.
The liveliness of characters in Mozart’s music inspires me; the transcended suffering of Schubert is a personal “belief” I live by; the incessant spirit of Dvorak has an irreplaceable place in my heart, and that’s not even the beginning of it. The things that some of my favorite musicians do could be such small things, (but big and significant!) like vibrating on the little notes, or playing certain articulations on the string at the tip instead of off the string. And there are also the things they say, like “the beginning (of the Ravel Quartet) should be like Helen Keller reaching out to feel a person’s face and realize it’s a friend” or describing the slow movement of Brahms B Major Piano Trio to be “like the universe.” And the stories! I LOVE the stories and I love telling them.(Mr. Soyer stories, Rudolf Serkin stories, Felix Galimir stories... all those classics!) They’re usually brutally funny, candid, and at the same time therapeutic.
All of these things are my everyday life, they are said, thought about, passed on. They are such a significant part to my life because they remind me of why I love and have chosen this life in music, and they always inspire me to think more and to explore further.
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