Arnaldo: I think we might be cousins from generations behind.

PCM: Actually, what struck me was your profile shot on the cover of your Brahms CD looks a lot like my father.

Arnaldo: I don't believe it, where was your dad born.

PCM: My dad was born here, his parents are from a small village in the Ukraine

Arnaldo: Basically, my mothers family came from the Ukraine, but my fathers family is from Persia. They moved to Palestine, my father with his family moved to Brazil in the late 20's. First to the Amazon region where they had a big Sephardic colony but then moved to Rio. That's where he met my mother in the late 40's. They were married I was born there.

PCM: Your first instrument was the Violin?

Arnaldo: Yes

PCM: When you started to play the violin was it to play Jewish music?

Arnaldo: My father was a dentist, he had a patient who was the director of a local conservator in the suburbs of Rio. She convinced him that it would be good for his children, to send them to a conservatory for a classical music education. You have to understand my father grew up very poor, he was a very hard working man, he knew nothing about music. In his mind a piano was for a girl and the violin was for the boy.

This is the story as my dad would tell. I started to play my sisters music by ear on the piano. It got her upset and she started to scream. It caused a lot of confusion at home. Finally my mother went to the director and told her she has caused a problem now with the kids fighting all he time and he teases her. The director said that I should have my own piano lessons so I can have my work and she will have her work. In short you can say I started to play the piano to annoy my sister.

I have to say we weren't brought up to use music as a professional objective in our lives. I went to Engineering University.

PCM: Do you think your parents being immigrants. . .

Arnaldo: This was not a serious profession you cannot make your living from being a musician. My father was very upset with me when I left engineering. When I left engineering I wasn't able to make a living at the piano because I was practicing all the time. I was still studying. But, with the violin I could work. There was a space at the opera house orchestra in Rio playing violin and I auditioned. I became a professional violinist to pay for my piano studies.

PCM: Did your dad ever turn around.

Arnaldo: You have to understand, he was raised in the hills of Palestine. There was no music nothing cultural around him. His life was very hard. He made it a point never to speak about it. He suffered a lot there at that time, I think that is what made them move to Brazil. You have to forget about this civilization, the world that we live in today, he came from a place where his parents where married at thirteen years old.

PCM: Is your dad proud of you?

Arnaldo: My dad died in 1985. He was very proud of me.

For him, the important thing was recognition, to be able to survive, earn money. It was very important to him. That and saving money, not spending too much. He would ask," if anything happens to your finger how will you eat?". I would say "It would be the same if I was a surgeon".

I am very proud of my past I think certainly the way I am today is because I had been through all this, we follow an emotional part in our lives and I must say that life has been so generous to me. I can only be thankful. If when I was twenty and I as shown what my future was, I wouldn't have believed it.