Steven Moeckel likens his preparation for the taxing Elgar Violin Concerto to a marathon runner's workouts.
He wakes up, practices, eats, then practices some more. Sometime in the afternoon, he practices again. It adds up to five or six hours.
"It's like running a marathon. You have to train yourself for more so that it's easy," Moeckel explained.
So how many marathons have you trained for, you wonder aloud, to which Moeckel breaks out in a pleasant and ironic chuckle.
"Yeah, do I look like I run marathons?" he retorts, and laughs some more.
Moeckel may look out of place in running shoes, but on the Tucson Music Hall stage he has become comfortably at home when the spotlight is focused squarely on him.
Each year since he arrived at the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in 2002, Moeckel has had an opportunity to shine in a concerto performance. Last year, he earned a prolonged standing ovation for Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat major.
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On Thursday and Friday, he tackles the little-played Elgar, a piece that rates as his all-time favorite.
"It's extremely difficult, but it's also a huge work. It demands a lot of stamina and just unbelievable passion the whole time," Moeckel explained in an impassioned tone. "It's just relentless in its approach. It is my absolute favorite violin concerto."
Allow him a few moments to gush:
"It's really the quintessential romantic violin concerto. If you take the romantic ideals, which were so much about nature and love and beauty, it just flows with beauty. Elgar's music is untouched by the mid-European movement into what we would define as modern music."
Elgar penned the concerto in 1910 for the era's celebrated Austrian-born American violinist Fritz Kreisler. Some historians note that Kreisler, who urged Elgar to write the concerto, advised him on some of its technical aspects.
Moeckel, a graduate of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, first learned the Elgar when he returned to the United States to study with Miriam Fried at Indiana University. That was about six years ago, and he's performed it publicly only once, back in Germany, where he started his career at age 19.
"You don't get a lot of opportunity to play the piece," he explained. "It's really huge and difficult for the orchestra. It's rhapsodic. It's not very well known, but it's going to be more of the standard because people are finding that they absolutely love it."
The Elgar is possibly not played so often because it tests the patience of an audience: It clocks in between 45 and 50 minutes.
Next week's concerts, which close out the TSO's 2006-07 season, also include the rarely played Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 4 in F minor and Philip Sawyers' new Concert Overture, which the Albany (N.Y) Symphony Orchestra commissioned and premiered last November. The TSO will be only the second orchestra to perform the work.
Moeckel, pianist will offer cd
Steven Moeckel and fellow Tucson Symphony Orchestra player Paula Fan, a pianist, will officially release their CD "Herein Lies the Soul," a compilation of beautiful violin works that they recorded in London last August.
The CD, which will be available for sale in the Tucson Music Hall lobby on Thursday and Friday, includes a pair of works by Elgar, Kreisler's "Liebesleid" and "Liebesfreud," and Sibelius' "Humoresque" Op. 87 No. 2 and "Humoresque" Op. 89 No. 4.
The disc is Moeckel's first recording; Fan is a veteran who appeared on recordings with her late husband, clarinetist John Denman.
Fan said they recorded the disc in a converted church that is home to Hyperion Records in London.
"When you're in a studio, you have to add ambience," Fan explained. "The thing about this CD is the sound you hear is the natural sound."
The album was recorded in one day, Moeckel said, starting "at 9 o'clock in the morning and ending at 6."
"I'm really happy with the result. . . . It's a great CD for people to listen to. It can be great background music, or you can sit down and listen. The music is really just beautiful. It's some of the most charming, charming stuff ever written for violin," he said.
The disc will be available for sale ($20) at the TSO concerts, and Moeckel said he will autograph copies.
– Cathalena E. Burch
Preview
Tucson Symphony Orchestra featuring concertmaster Steven Moeckel performing Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor.
• Guest conductor: David Lockington.
• When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday.
• Where: Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
• Tickets: $18-$47 through the orchestra, 882-8585; or Ticketmaster, 321-1000. Prices subject to change.
• Program: Sawyers' Concert Overture. Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61. Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 4 in F minor.
• Et cetera: A display on Sir Edward Elgar will be set up in the Music Hall lobby in honor of the 150th anniversary of his birth. The display is on loan from the American Elgar Foundation.
