Interview with Richard Young Violist - Part I - Part II

Richard: If you suddenly hear barking, the mailman has arrived.

PCM: My dog is fifteen and still determined to get the mailman.  Vermeer has been around since 1969. Are you the original members?

Richard: No, Shmuel Ashkenasi is the only original member. Marc Johnson the cellist is almost an original member, he joined in the early seventies. I joined in eighty- five, Mathias Tacke the second violin joined in ninety- two, so in this form we've been doing it for fourteen years.

PCM: Were you familiar with the quartet before you joined?

Richard: Oh Yes! They were my favorite quartet.

PCM: How did you hear about the audition?

Richard: It was very crazy. I had known Marc, we had been students together. When their previous violist decided to leave they were looking for people to consider to audition. They made one decision that I think was very smart, I would advise any quartet to do this. That is consider not only violist's, but consider violinist's who could also play the viola. You increase the possibilities of finding the right person. Frankly there are not as many good violist as there are violinist's, so if you're going to open it to both violist and violinist, it increases the chance of finding the right person. That's what they did except what they didn't know, was that they assumed I played the viola before. I never did. I didn't tell them. I just went through the audition process. Ironically I was subbing for the first violinist in the Muir Quartet and touring in Australia. Mark tracked me down there and asked if I wanted to audition. The audition was very intense. They heard a lot of people. I had to play with them on two occasions, a ton of repertoire. It worked out.

The best way to audition people for a quartet is not just solo stuff. Have them sit in and play a dozen string quartets that represent the repertoire the quartet is playing. It was a very big imposing list of stuff. I've played most of it before but not the viola parts. I borrowed a viola and practiced like crazy to learn the parts. A lot of violist make a huge deal of the differences, of course there are some. But any good violinist can play the viola and vice versa.

PCM: Do you ever get to play the violin?

Richard: There are some pieces that require one violin usually with piano or voice. Often I get to play those parts on violin. We divide up those parts amongst us. For instance, you're from Philadelphia we did a couple of times with Benita Valente the Romance Suite by Shostakovich . Both times I played the fiddle part. It's nice to still be doing both although my primary focus is the viola.

PCM: How old where you when you started?

Richard: Let's see, I was five when I started violin and thirty -seven when I started viola.

PCM: You Played for the Queen of Belgium when you were thirteen. What was it in you as a child, did you practice all the time? Did you have to fight with your parents because you wanted to watch tv?

Richard: It was the other way around, I was fascinated by the violin and I guess if it were up to me I might have worked harder at it. My parents didn't want their kid to turn into some weirdo that only did music. So I was always encouraged to do a lot of sports and boy scouts. Academics were always prized in our house. So they wanted both their kids to be just well rounded people and not get into any specialized focus until much later. I'm glad it worked out that way.

I see kids now who are so pushed to do music by their parents, they are not incorrect to believe that you have to take advantage in those early years to give their kids the best chance. But they're missing out stuff and my dad always wanted his kids to be well rounded, he made sure of that although high school it was very rare if I practiced no more than one hour a day. I was more interested in reading the sports page instead of a music score.

PCM: What kind of music did you listen to growing up?

Richard: My parents were very much into classical music. They were not professional musicians but that's what they listened to at home. Going away to college I really got into the Beatles they were big time them. How could you not listen to them!