Janos Starker at 100: Remembering a great Cellist

Starkers class usually counted between 16 and 20 students, and while he always wanted to reduce his workload, he usually ended up taking on more students every year. Enrollment was done in a peculiar system: since most people came from abroad and could not afford a trip to the USA just for an audition, they would play for Starker at one of his many masterclasses around the world. Later on, once accepted by the master, one would simply send an application, by mail, and would show up at the beginning of the semester. Myself, I had participated in a master class in Mainz, Germany, in 1989. I was in my third year at the Conservatory in Munich and had not really been planning to study abroad just yet, but I was very impressed by Starker’s teaching and was simply intrigued by the thought of studying with this great artist. So at the end of the masterclass, like many others, I asked whether I could go and study with him. The answer was yes, and so I found myself at his studio’s door just about one year later, on a hot September morning, for a procedure that was called Blue Card Day. I am sure all of this is done online today, but 35 years ago, every student had to get a “blue card” signed by their prospective teacher, or else he would not get admitted to that teacher’s studio. I had not known this before and came to school, only to find a huge line of cellists waiting in front of Mr. Starker’s door. I went into a state of shock immediately, since I thought I would never make it into the class. There was more than double the number of students than what Starker would be able to take on, and I was not confident at all that I would make it. But, oh wonder, when my time came and I stood in front of him, he hardly looked at me and simply signed my card.
I remained in Starker’s class for two years, and I won’t ever forget this time. Every lesson was special. Every lesson, you had to prepare a new piece- you could never play the same thing twice.  Starker’s studio, the famous MA 155, was a small yet beautiful room, with lots of old photographs of famous cellists on the wall, and a little podium for the student. When you played, there was not only János Starker across from you, but also other students, colleagues, or other teachers. Lessons were never private- there was always someone listening- and this was Starker’s philosophy: everyone should learn from everyone. 
Playing in front of your classmates was never easy, and one of Starker’s famous comments was always: 

“Your colleagues are not laughing at you. They are just relieved that they are not you.”

Lesson times were never the same. Starker was often away, but when he was in town, things could get very busy. “Avoid at all cost” was his first lesson at 9:00 in the morning. It was at that time when he would usually come in, looking tired after too little sleep, smoking, with a very serious face. You would play, and after a minute or so Starker would stop you, slowly walk over to his cello (still smoking), sit down, and play, without tuning, whatever work you had just attempted to play. And it would always be perfect, beautifully phrased and in tune. It was then that he would say: “One of the twenty things you need to be able to do in order to be a successful cellist is to play the cello well!” or, more simply (and this almost felt like a compliment): “you did rather well but a) you are not playing the right notes and b) you are not making any music…”

If lessons were tough, masterclasses were on an entirely different level. They usually took place on Saturday afternoons, in a larger room, with sometimes more than 100 people attending. Everyone wanted to be there, everyone was interested. In one masterclass, I remember Starker’s assistant playing Rachmaninov Sonata. On the piano was his girlfriend. When he got to a particularly beautiful, slow, romantic theme, Starker stopped him and asked him to play once more “as if you were saying I love you!” The student tried again, but Starker was not happy. “Put your cello down and say it, say: I love you!”. With dozens of other cellists listening, this was not easily done. Starker’s last comment: “If I were your girlfriend, I am not sure I would believe you!”did the rest. Of course, everyone knew who his girlfriend was, and that she was sitting right there at the piano.
Studying at IU was hard, but it felt better than at other, more competitive schools, because everyone was in the same boat, and everyone was free to take lessons also from the other professors: Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Helga Winold. Playing for one of the two after a particularly hard lesson with Starker would feel like paradise, as they would treat you in an unbelievably nice and caring way.

“When you play the cello, you must tell a story, not just play notes!”
Janos Starker

Privately, Starker was a completely different person, and this was particularly the case when he invited his class to his annual cello party- at his house. A beautiful, large American home, there was a great living room with fireplace, lots of books and photographs everywhere. There were also three fully stocked bars- one in the living room, one in the back of the house, and one by the pool. The pool, which had the name “Kodaly-Pool” (it was built with the earnings Starker made with his recording of Kodaly’s Solo Sonata) was where all the “bad” students assembled, while the “good” students sat with Starker in the living room, watching Casals videos and listening to his stories.
A poor devil was who had the first lesson the next morning at 9. Starker might have seemed the nicest person in the world the night before, but at school he seemed like a different person. It was during those mornings that you could hear comments like. “Your fingers are like chopsticks!” or “Who was your teacher? You should go and get your money back!”
Starker played billiard, pingpong, and chess. He loved Scotch Whiskey, and he was a notorious chain smoker, famous for smoking even while he played the cello (he had a great technique holding his cigarette between the 3rd and 4th fingers of his right hand while holding his bow). It was still the Nineties, but American universities were all completely non-smoking, and Indiana was no exception. But Starker thoroughly enjoyed smoking anywhere in the music school building, and the dean had no easy time defending the exception he made for him in this matter.
There is a story of Starker actually cancelling a recital in South Carolina after not being allowed a pre-concert smoke. When it was impossible for him to smoke backstage, in the dressing room, outside the dressing room, outside the hall- he simply walked away.
Starker himself knew that studying with him was not easy, and so he loved the following joke (and even quoted it in his book): 

There was a car accident, and three cellists died, and they all tried to get to heaven," the player said. "St. Peter asked the first one, 'Who did you study with?' 'Well, Rostropovich.' 'No, you have to go to hell,' St. Peter said. The next one replied, 'Leonard Rose.' The response? 'You have to go to hell.' And the third one comes. 'Who did you study with?' 'Starker.' St. Peter says, 'You may come in. You already went through hell.'"

Back to history- back to the spring of 1924. 
When Starker was born at the Saint-János Hospital in Budapest, he already had two brothers. His mother wanted nothing more than a girl and had not thought about boy´s names, so when the time came to give a name to the baby, she followed a doctor´s suggestion to call her boy “János”, after the name of the hospital.
While Starker lived in Budapest for more than 20 years, he was not a Hungarian citizen. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, and did not hold citizenship in Hungary until after the Second World War. Without a passport, they automatically became lower-class citizens, and they were not allowed to travel.
Both brothers already played the violin, and when little János turned 6, his parents decided to give him a cello. Then in 1931, one live-changing event took place: a concert of Pablo Casals. Taken backstage after the performance, Casals kissed the little boy on his cheek. According to his parents, János did not wash his face for one week.
Two years later, there was another truly important performance taking place: the 1933 Budapest recital of Cellist Emmanuel Feuermann, accompanied by Béla Bartok on the piano, made a lifelong impression on Starker, who had just begun to study at the Budapest Academy. His teacher was Adolf Schiffer- a disciple of the famous 19th-century cellist David Popper, but there was another figure at the academy who had an equally strong influence on Starker: the composer and music professor Leo Weiner. Weiner was quite a legend and had taught virtually all great Hungarian musicians of the time: conductors Antál Dorati, Eugene Ormandy, and Georg Solti; pianists Geza Anda and  Gyorgy Sebok, and violinist Tibor Varga. Starker later called Leo Weiner the greatest educator he ever met.
At age 8, Starker began his “career” as a teacher, giving lessons to a 6-year old. When he turned 12, his class had already grown to 5 students. Then, in 1938, he had his first, great success: when asked by his teacher, he jumped in to perform the Dvořák Cello Concerto with orchestra- on just a few hour’s notice.
In 1939, he also performed Zoltán Kodály´s Solo Sonata for the first time. Little did he know that this work of the great Hungarian composer should become his own signature piece, which would earn him a “Grand Prix du Disque” eight years later.
At age 15, Starker already had achieved considerable success in Hungary. He would certainly have continued, if not the Second World War had started. Antisemitism grew at an alarming pace, and life in Budapest became very difficult for the entire Starker family. János´ two older brothers were deported and later died in a forced labor camp of the Nazis, along with several other relatives. Miraculously, his parents survived, and János himself managed somehow to keep working in various jobs, thus avoiding deportation. In 1944, he married pianist Eva Uranyi, but a normal life was far from possible: shortly thereafter, the Germans would invade Hungary. Starker spent three months in the labor camp of an airplane factory on an island of the Danube, but narrowly survived American bombings of the facility. When the dust had settled and the war was finally over, Hungary had become a communist state. 

As child of Jewish immigrants, Starker was considered an “enemy of the state” and naturally tried to leave Budapest. But without passport and other documents, this was close to impossible. A friend in the Swedish embassy helped him and his wife to leave the country with Swedish papers, but the only got so far as Bukarest, Romania. Travel to other European countries would have required a visa, which the couple did not have. In the end, they had to return to Budapest.
In 1945, heavily decimated by the war, the Budapest Philharmonic, orchestra of the Hungarian National Opera, was looking for a principal cellist, and Starker finally got his chance. As a member of a national institution, he not only had a job and a salary- however small- but he also was eligible for Hungarian citizenship and finally could apply for a passport. 
As part of the communist east bloc, Hungary´s borders to Austria were closed, and travel to the west was impossible without a visa. But when the opportunity came, Starker did not hesitate: he applied for the 1946 Concours de Genève- the Geneva international Music Competition, which enabled him to apply for a 3-week visa to Switzerland. He asked for a leave from the Budapest Philharmonic- and did not return to his home country for the next 25 years.
For people from most European countries, 1946 Switzerland seemed like an unreal wonderland. Untouched by the war, blessed with beautiful nature, the small country had food in abundancy, and life was close to normal. At the Geneva Competition, Starker won Sixth Prize (audience favourite Antonio Janigro came in second after the French cellist Raymonde Verrandeau), but while he was not unhappy with the results, the competition made him reconsider his whole approach to cello playing: Then quite suddenly Starker came to a terrifying conclusion.

 "I played like a blind man," he explained to me. "What happens to the bird who sings but doesn't know how it sings? That's what happens to child prodigies. One day they wake up and ask themselves how they do it – and have no answers. Consistency is the difference between the professional and the amateur. I was grown up and could no longer depend on instinct. I nearly had a nervous breakdown."
he began to think about his own ideas for developing the technique of his instrument, trying out theories for bowing, phrasing, breathing and the distribution of muscle power. So began a lifetime of analysis and application with perfection as the ultimate goal – a target he never abandoned right until his death. (Margaret Campbell, The Independent, 2013)

In the years that followed the Geneva Competition, Starker developed his own playing method- technique, use of the bow, phrasing, use of the entire body to achieve a natural way of playing… in a way that should become a new musical identity. His ultimate goal: perfection.

From Geneva, Starker did not return to Geneva. He went on to Belgium, France, and finally arrived in Paris, where he tried to built a new existence. But numerous attempts to settle, performing in salon ensembles, orchestras and chamber ensembles, in order to earn enough money for a living, failed. Even the „Grand Prix du Disque“ he received for his recording of the Kodály Solo Sonata, and a subsequent visit to Paris of Zoltán Kodály, did not bring the much needed change. That change finally arrived in the person of another Hungarian: the conductor Antal Doráti. Having recently named Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Doráti came to Paris looking for a principal cellist (at the time, music directors could more or less freely hire and fire musicians as they pleased). Starker only played for ten minutes, and Doráti offered him a contract.

"Don't get excited. Create Excitement!"
János Starker

All of the sudden, Starker´s future had changed dramatically. Instead of living on 10 Dollars a week in Paris, he would now make 150 Dollars in Dallas. But unfortunately, a contract alone was not enough to get him to the United States: he needed a visa, and visas were very difficult to obtain. They were issued through a quota system, and waiting for a visa could sometimes take many months if not years- unless you were a doctor, nurse, or… a teacher. Once again Doráti came to Starkers rescue and arranged for a teaching contract as a lecturer in order to apply for the visa. Doráti had a friend in Dallas who was willing to help: Wilfried Bain. He used to conduct a local choir, and who had just been appointed Dean of the School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington. Thus, Starker for the first time came into contact with the city that should become his home in the future: Bloomington, Indiana.
Dallas turned out to be a great orchestra, and for the first time Starker and his wife could really support themselves. The time in Dallas, however, did not last long, for another Hungarian offered Starker an opportunity he could not refuse: Fritz Reiner, the acclaimed conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, needed a new cellist. Thus, after only one season, Starker followed Reiner’s call and moved to New York. 
The orchestra of the Met was America´s busiest and best-paid orchestra. Between rehearsals, recordings and performances (which often all took place on one single day), Starker kept teaching. There was not much time left for anything else, and chamber music or solo playing was only possible in the summers. Four very busy years passed, then Reiner was appointed new Music Director of the Chicago Symphony. Two musicians of the Met were asked to come along with him, one of them Starker.

1953, Starker moved to Chicago, 1954 he became an American citizen. This made it possible to also bring his parents, and the parents of his wife, to the United States. Chicago was a great orchestra (these were the golden years of the “Chicago sound”- documented in many recordings), but Starker did not intend to spend his life in an orchestra. The CSO made it impossible for him to realize a career as a soloist, and so after nine years of orchestra playing, he left Chicago in 1957 to once again begin a new life. 
While he did not intend to spend too much time there, an offer from Indiana University gave him the financial security he needed (he had to support his and his wife's parents). Wilfried Bain offered him a contract as a kind of “artist in residence”, and Starker moved to Bloomington, Indiana. The city would remain his home for the rest of his life.
 

Before long, his career as a soloist really took off, and Starker travelled the world, playing with virtually all major orchestras, performing in all the great concert halls of Europe, America, Asia and Australia. 
At the same time, he became America´s most famous cello teacher.
25 years after leaving his native Budapest, he finally returned to his hometown. Hungary was still under communist rule, but Starker travelled with an American passport and had already visited Czechoslovakia, Yogoslavia and Bulgaria before. It would not be the only time to visit Budapest, but one thing was clear: Starkers home and heart were elsewhere: in Bloomington, Indiana.

"The most important thing for me is teaching. I was basically born to be a teacher. That's my temperament. No matter how great the ovation is after a concert, the people eventually sit down and stop applauding. But what you teach will actually continue for generations!"

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