Under That Virtuosa Veneer, Josefowicz Is Just a Regular Kid

At an age when her contemporaries are giving up their doll collections for fantasies about pop rock stars, Leila Josefowicz nonchalantly discusses the merits of various violin concertos. The 11-year-old virtuosa makes her San Diego Symphony debut tonight performing Eduoard Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole” in the kickoff of the symphony’s SummerPops season. Two months ago, she performed Henryk Wienawski’s Second Violin Concerto with the Pacific Symphony in Orange County.

“I’ve played the Wieniawski a lot,” explained Josefowicz in a phone interview earlier this month. “But the Lalo is really long and hard. The opening of the Lalo is especially difficult--it goes all over the violin’s E string. If you’re not warmed up, you could really mess it up.”

Messing up, of course, is not her style. A prodigy who has been playing violin since the age of 3, Josefowicz is already accustomed to playing well for even the most demanding audiences. Two years ago, she soloed at the Radcliffe Club’s fete for Leonard Bernstein, and last year she performed in the televised opening celebration of Palm Desert’s Bob Hope Cultural Center. She has fiddled on British television, where her playing won her an instant return invitation, and last week she opened the Mozart in Monterey festival in Northern California.

In San Diego she will be performing under the baton of guest conductor Bruce Hangen in nightly concerts through Saturday at Hospitality Point on Mission Bay.

In spite of all her public exposure, this gifted sixth-grader is not a miniature prima donna. According to her teacher and mentor, Robert Lipsett, she is a level-headed kid who likes to play tetherball along with the rest of them.

“Even after she had played for President and Mrs. Reagan, she still was her same modest self. She loves playing the violin, but she knows that she still has a lot to learn,” Lipsett said. “The most important thing is that while she is willing to sacrifice to perfect her talent, she does it willingly. It all comes from within.”

That sacrifice includes making room for daily violin practice and forfeiting the seemingly inalienable right to watch television.

“I practice about four hours a day, although not all at once,” Josefowicz said. “I practice early in the morning, after school, and then after doing my homework. We don’t have a television, but of course, I wouldn’t have much time to watch it. I guess most of the shows on TV are pretty silly anyway.”

Lipsett, who teaches at USC and at the Community School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, noted that Josefowicz’s family environment has made an important contribution to her stable development as a young performer. “Her parents are quite remarkable. They are both in scientific fields and have their feet firmly on the ground. They understand that there can be no shortcuts in Leila’s development.”

In the beginning, physicist Jack Josefowicz started studying violin along with his 3-year-old daughter. Noting that Leila had an unusually acute ear, he enrolled her in a Suzuki course of study.

“For the record, she did not just pick up the violin and start playing Mozart,” her father said. “In the first couple of months of Suzuki study, she did not show very much interest at all. Since it took a couple of months to get any kind of sound out of the instrument, we both struggled together. She had to play a 1/16th-size violin, and the sound of those instruments is really terrible. When the intonation was not right on, she could not tolerate it because of her perfect pitch. I don’t blame her now.”

When Leila was able to produce an acceptable sound on her violin, she took off and left her father behind. Although Papa Jack had studied classical guitar for some 10 years, he could not keep up with his daughter’s rapid progress.

“I played with her at first, but after 1 1/2 years I gave up playing and then just coached and encouraged her.”

Wherever Josefowicz performs, Lipsett is backstage offering encouragement and advice. When asked if her mentor would accompany her to San Diego, she responded without hesitation.

“Definitely. Without him there, I wouldn’t play my best. He tells me to relax and enjoy myself, to take everything as it comes while I’m performing.”

She began her studies with Lipsett when she was 8, even though it was not Lipsett’s usual policy to accept students that young. The audition was reciprocal, however, since Leila and her parents were looking for a teacher with whom she would react sympathetically.

“I auditioned for him and decided that I liked him the best,” she explained.

Lipsett is eager to retain this reciprocal aspect of the teacher-student relationship.

“I want her to express her own ideas about the music, and when they are on the right path, we try to incorporate them into her performance. We discussed the Lalo after she played it in Monterey, and I asked her for some interpretive ideas in the slow section. She demonstrated the way she wanted to play it, and we decided to do it that way, which really excited her,” Lipsett stated.

“ ‘Hey, I get to do it my way!’ she said.”