Finalist of 2004 International
Web Concert Hall Competition
Armin Egger (AUSTRIA)
 Tell
us about your musical background.
My parents are not professional musicians but music has always
played a great part in their lives, and as long as I can remember, my
parents used to take me to concerts and opera. When I was 9, I wanted
to take music lessons, as so many others, I started with a Recorder. My
teacher had an amazing talent to motivate students: she sets up a small
group, and in addition to private lessons, she held at least one group
rehearsal a week. Over the many months, we had many public performances.
Just being on the stage with friends and experience of making music with
others have intrigued me as a child in many ways. At 11, I wanted to move
on to an instrument that I could accompany myself with. So there was the
choice between the piano, which I was not interested for many reasons,
too much competition being one of the reason, and the guitar. Therefore,
I decided to select the guitar as my instrument.
At 15, I entered a high
school in Graz/Austria, a school with an emphasis in music. Two years
later, I was admitted to the guitar class of Heinz Irmler at the
University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, where I graduated in
2000. From 1997 and on, I spent 2 years at the Royal Academy of Music in
London doing a postgraduate course with Timothy Walker.
What do you do now?
After I graduated from Graz University I was very lucky to find an
assistantship. Therefore, since 2000, I have been teaching as an
assistant to my former teacher, Heinz Irmler. A part from participating
in the master classes, I don’t officially study anymore. However, I
realized that teaching is one of the most effective ways to become a
better musician. In many ways, teaching allows you to ‘look’ into a
musical composition more deeply than you would have normally. Things
that you might take as obvious might not be so clear to others; and
through such experience, you realize that the obvious solution doesn’t
always be the best…. Also, I have to admit that I sometimes learn good
ideas from my own students…
Who were your
teachers? And how some of your teachers influenced you as a musician?
In Austria I studied with Elisabeth and Heinz Irmler, and in London,
with Timothy Walker. All have taught me that the musical expression is
the core of playing an instrument. It’s not about displaying how fast or
loud one can play their instrument. Technique is no more than just a
tool to express your musical ideas.
Apart from my
teachers, who have had most influence on my musical development, I
learned a lot from listening to orchestra, soloists, opera performances
and so on. Especially for a guitarist, it is vital to listen to other
musicians attentively. Guitarists are soloists, we don’t play in the
orchestra and many don’t play chamber music. However, working with and
listening to other musicians certainly broadens your musical horizon and
will give you valuable ideas and insights of music and other venues.
Even though I may never play Rossini’s overture on the guitar, listening
to the performance will help me in developing the depth of various
interpretations, for example.
What kind of basics do you practice?
I try to spend about 30
minutes a day practicing basic technical patterns. I usually link those
exercises with the technical problems of the pieces I practice. For
example, if I’m working on a piece that involves the use of tremolo, I
practice various tremolos and arpeggios that will prepare me to polish
the piece I am working on. Various technical exercises also serve as an
excellent warm up. And of course, it gets you in shape again when you
haven’t practiced for a few days or weeks.
Do
you have many performances?
Currently, I have a
teaching position at the University of Music in Graz. So, I split my
time between teaching and performing. I guess I play between 30 and 40
concerts a year, mostly in Austria and neighboring countries. In
addition to those concerts, I’ve always been fortunate to be invited to
perform in overseas countries; my next trip, for example, will take me
to Israel in October 2004.
What period
music do you enjoy playing most and why?
That is a question that I cannot really answer. As my mood changes, my
taste in music changes also. When you’re playing the guitar, a certain
affinity to Spanish music helps because it makes up a large part of our
repertoire. I don’t know whether I’ve come to like Spanish music because
I play the guitar or perhaps I’ve chosen the guitar because I love
Spanish music. However, I also enjoy playing contemporary repertoire, especially
when you get a chance to work with living composers and learn about the
piece at first hand.
In your opinion,
what is your strength in your playing?
When I play, I try to
touch people’s heart. So, I’m constantly working towards to developing
compelling interpretation that can do so. Therefore, I would like musical intensity and
expression to be my strength.
What do you
hope to accomplish as a musician?
On stage, I try to convey my musical ideas to the audience. Technical
perfection is something that I’m aiming to achieve because it is the
tool to express music but I also admit that I think that musical
expression has precedence over technical virtuosity. So my goal as a
musician is to achieve a degree of technical perfection that allows me
to express anything I hope.
Do you like any
other forms of art? Such as painting? A favorite writer? Tell us about
it.
I’m a big opera fan. I
spend a lot of my spare time going to the opera or at least listening to
recordings. Living here in Vienna and having the Vienna State Opera at
my door step, it is a luxury that I try to enjoy as often as possible.
As strange as it might
seem to even compare the largest and the most intimate forms of musical
performance, I always try to put some opera into my guitar playing.
Hector Berlioz said: “The guitar is a small orchestra”. I perfectly
agree and in addition, I even try to include a few voices to that small
orchestra.
What do you hope
to achieve ten years from now in your music career?
Ten years is a very long time. I have no idea where I would like to be
then. Ten years ago I was only two years into my studies. So I hope in
the next decade I will improve my playing as much as I have in the last
ten years.
Tell us about Julian Bream Prize.
The “Julian Bream Prize” is an annual competition staged by the Royal
Academy of Music in London for its students. World famous guitarist
Julian Bream himself selects the set pieces and is also the sole
adjudicator. Together with Andrés Segovia, Julian Bream has been the
most important and influential figure of the Guitar in the 20th
century. It is thanks to him that the guitar now is considered to be a
major category in classical music and composers such as William Walton,
Benjamin Britten and many others have written important works for the
instrument. So having been awarded that Prize by Bream himself, I
consider one of my most important achievements.
In your opinion, what are the
characteristics of a good performer?
A good performer manages to grip his audience’s attention from the very
first to the very last moment of one’s performance.
How do you
judge a good performance?
A good performance of myself? I find rather difficult to describe
it because I tend to be overly critical with myself. On the other hand, this
is absolutely necessary on your way to “perfecting” yourself in
harmonizing with the instrument, but it can be
dangerous too, if you only look at the things that have gone wrong in your
performance.
It’s not easy to apply
general criteria for judging a successful performance. It’s not like
sports where we can measure quantities rather than quality. In music, it
will be challenging to apply measurable defined parameters to judge.
Even stylistic perception changes through time, a Bach performance from
the 1960s would seem totally out of date today, but yet it might still
be regarded a convincing performance.
If you ask three
concert-goers, you will probably get three different opinions about the
same performer. Therefore I think the ultimate measurement of a
performance is whether or not it has touched my emotion even if I cannot
always clearly pin down what exactly it was that moved me.
Interviewed by
MusicalOnline on October, 2004
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