Janos Starker’s career stands in proud defiance of that adage, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
For 58 of his 69 years he has been playing the cello professionally, and he has been teaching even longer. The Hungarian-born cellist can look back at a performing career as distinguished as that of any colleague: at various times in his life the recital platform, the orchestra stage and the opera pit all claimed him. So did the principal cello chair of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
But nothing better defines the relationship Starker has with his instrument than teaching. Since 1958, his cello seminars at Indiana University in Bloomington-he refuses to call them master classes-have attracted string players from all over the world. Orchestras from Seattle to Seoul number countless Starker pupils in their cello sections.
“I personally cannot perform without teaching, and I cannot teach without performing. When you have to explain what you are doing, you discover what you are really doing,” Starker explains.
The cellist will take time out from his teaching duties to make one of his infrequent Chicago concert appearances at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Orchestra Hall, where he will play the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Tokyo College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Junichi Hirokami conducting.
Here again, Starker’s performing and teaching are inextricably linked. Revenue from the concert will be shared by the Civic Orchestra of Chicago-the CSO’s training orchestra-and the United States Committee for UNICEF. The oldest private music school in Japan, the Tokyo College has contributed much to the development of Western classical music in that country. For several years it has maintained a student exchange program with Indiana University; hence Starker’s involvement.
His concert carries an anniversary cachet: It will mark the 40th anniversary of his Chicago Symphony Orchestra solo debut in the same concerto, under Fritz Reiner’s baton. Although Starker has performed the concerto countless times, and recorded it twice, he regards that 1953 CSO performance as a high-water mark in his five-year tenure as the orchestra’s solo cellist.
“During those five seasons, 1953 to 1958, the orchestra engaged only two solo cellists, Gregor Piatigorsky and Pierre Fournier,” Starker recalls. “The rest of the time I played all the solo cello literature-Schumann, Saint-Saens, Haydn, Prokofiev, Strauss, the Brahms Double Concerto. No cellist played solo with the Chicago Symphony as often as I did.”
It was Starker’s countryman, Fritz Reiner, who noted the cellist’s talent in 1948 when he was serving as first cellist of the Dallas Symphony under another Hungarian, Antal Dorati. When Dorati was offered the music directorship of the Minneapolis Symphony, in 1949, he wanted Starker to accompany him, but Reiner had other plans.
Reiner in those years was one of the Metropolitan Opera’s principal conductors and he wanted Starker to be his principal cellist. That’s how Starker came to spend five years in the opera pit.
Reiner ascended to the CSO post in 1953 and again he asked Starker to follow him. The cellist was the only musician Reiner took with him to the Midwest. Starker stayed in Chicago for another five-year stretch before heading off into a notable career as soloist, chamber musician and as Distinguished Professor at Indiana U., a post he has held for 35 years and counting.
Every CSO player of a certain age has his Reiner stories-some of them gleefully embellished and perhaps dubious. But Starker’s insights into his former conductor carry a special ring of authority based on long, close association.
“Reiner was not necessarily the greatest performer of all time, but he was the greatest conductor in terms of musical knowledge and technique,” Starker says. “When he had done a fabulous rehearsal, he felt the job was done, so the concert was not particularly interesting. But if the rehearsal still was not quite what he wanted, then he could give a staggering performance.
“I have never agreed Reiner was the tyrant he was made out to be. He always said he was on the podium to conduct, not to teach, which meant he had to depend on his players. When he hired you, he watched you with an eagle eye for the first few months; if you couldn’t function, your days in the orchestra were numbered. But if you performed the way he expected, from that moment on he never bothered you. He was looking for professionals, because he was a professional himself. That is the greatest accolade I can give to any musician.”
Professional-the designation perfectly suits Starker, too. A musician so completely in command of his instrument does not have to worry about engaging an audience’s attention. All Starker has to do is touch bow to strings and out pours an intensity of sound that immediately takes hold of one’s senses. And the spell is cast entirely through the music, for Starker in performance maintains a grave facial expression and little eye contact with his audience. It is as if he were telling us, “Listen to what the music is saying; don’t watch me.” We listen, we listen.
And yet Starker has never sought the kind of fame most people associate with musical stardom. He plays the cello as beautifully as anyone has ever played any instrument. Still, the cellist regards his gift as a responsibility-to do the maximum with the talent he has. If the playing is good enough, then the listener will find it a source of pleasure.
“I am what is called a `successful’ musician,” Starker says, “and that’s all that I aim for.”
The seeds of the master cellist’s success were planted early. A child prodigy in his native Budapest, he decided at age 7 that he wanted to become a soloist. One year later he was asked to assist a still younger pupil in her studies; this served as young Janos’ debut as a teacher. His first professional engagement, playing the Dvorak concerto, came when he was 14. After graduating from the Franz Liszt Academy (where Georg Solti also studied), the cellist became, at 21, principal of the Budapest Opera and Philharmonic.
World War II disrupted Hungary’s musical life, the young Starker’s career along with it. Coming to the United States after the war, he found the prospect of playing in American orchestras more appealing than continuing as a soloist: hence his decade in Dallas, New York and Chicago.
His original plan was to stay only four years with the Chicago Symphony. “I handed in my resignation at the start of my fourth season,” Starker says. “But then came the Hungarian Revolution, when I imported a huge number of family members to the U.S., and I couldn’t afford to leave.” The cellist proposed that the CSO allow him to continue playing first chair but only when Reiner was conducting. The management, however, refused to go along with such an arrangement, and Starker left.
“Reiner got very mad at me for leaving,” Starker recalls. “At the time I considered him like my father. I think I was one of the few people ever to leave the CSO without being fired! Those five years were the most important of my life, as a learning experience, for making music on the highest level with a great conductor.”
Considering his options after leaving Chicago, Starker inevitably was drawn to academia. Already in his youth he had discovered that his own understanding and the possibilities of his instrument grew as he helped students.
The dual life he leads as a performer and teacher would tire anyone less energetic and compulsive. In the 35 years he has taught at Indiana University, his deep understanding of the mysterious process by which music is passed from professor to performer to listener has been widely noted. In recent years Starker has cut down his teaching load from as many as 30 students several years ago to 15 now, although he still listens to or supervises nine more.
“I consider teaching more important than anything else,” says Starker. “It’s incredible what goes on today in cello playing, not just in Bloomington but everywhere in the world. The standards have risen immensely. It keeps me in shape! I think I’m the only one since my colleague Leonard Rose (who died in 1984) who has made an international career on the cello and really taught, not just spread holy water in so-called master classes.”
Several members of the CSO cello section, past and present, studied with Starker and all report their lives were forever changed by the experience.
“He provides a role model that is extremely inspirational for students on any level,” says CSO cellist Donald Moline. “Not only is he a technically perfect player, but he is a very, very analytical person intellectually, and he can articulate lucidly, which is the essence of great teaching.”
Although numerous Starker cello students, such as Gary Hoffman-son of former CSO associate conductor Irwin Hoffman-have won major music competitions, the teacher isn’t crowing.
“I’m only interested in whether they make decent contributions to the musical life, in the meantime making a decent life for themselves,” Starker says.
Speaking from his large country home outside Bloomington-with its creature comforts of swimming pool, Ping-Pong table and the sound of children and grandchildren at play-Starker is a man who has achieved everything he wants out of life. Although he clearly has enough vitality to go on playing and teaching and sharing music with the world, he hints that retirement may be somewhere down the road.
“I will be 70 next summer, and I’m not getting any younger,” he says. “Seventy is a respectable age, and cellists don’t last as long as violinists and pianists. I don’t do the kind of touring I used to do, because in the years just after I left Chicago I was already playing more than 100 concerts a year. Now I play 40 to 50; that’s plenty. When I arrive back home after a long series of concerts and get off the plane, I know it’s plenty.”
