Yes, She Takes Leaps (That’s the Point)

Classical music critics and audiences claim to yearn for artists with personality, but Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is more than some of them bargained for.

She’s been called the Method Actor or the Bad Girl of the Violin. She’s been criticized for interpreting music too intensely, for overpowering the composer’s intentions.

Some people also don’t like her sultry looks, tough talk on TV shows, or concert dress that is either too casual or too revealing. Take your pick.

Her defenders--and they’re many--counter by citing the drama and excitement she generates when she plays.

You can judge for yourself when she makes her Pacific Symphony debut this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, playing Bruch’s beloved Concerto No. 1.

“All of us have played these concertos for hundreds of years,” the violinist said on her 40th birthday--Jan. 10--in a phone interview from her home in New York City.

“If each person doesn’t show some freedom of expression, what’s the point of so many people playing the same piece? What’s the point of so many actors playing Hamlet? You have to have artistic freedom.”

In fact, Salerno-Sonnenberg believes a classical artist should interpret as freely as does a jazz artist.

“In jazz, you have something that is [generally] not written down,” she said. “There are no notes on a paper, unlike an actor who has a text to follow. It’s very improvisational.

“But even if you have a text or notes, that still leaves you an enormous amount of freedom with respect to what’s on the page and what you feel with those notes. The same amount of freedom applies.”

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Salerno-Sonnenberg was born in Rome to an Italian American mother and a Russian father who abandoned the family when she was 3 months old. Her mother gave her a violin when she was 5--she didn’t ask for it--and had to force her to practice. She began to shine.

Three years later, she came to the United States to begin studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. The schoolkids in her suburban neighborhood ridiculed her ethnicity, her poor English and her preference for classical music. But she remembers finding comfort among other Italian families.

“You seek out your brethren,” she said.

Soon her progress drew notice. She won a competition when she was 10 that earned her a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. At 14, she began studies with Dorothy DeLay, famed for her work with young talent, at the Juilliard School in New York. Three years later, Salerno-Sonnenberg moved to New York to attend Juilliard full time.

Then problems started. New York offered exciting distractions and soon she began cutting classes. For seven months, she stopped playing altogether.

Faced with an ultimatum from DeLay, Salerno-Sonnenberg threw herself into furious preparation for the 1981 Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition with less than three months to go.

She won first prize. She was 20.

The media blitz that followed included appearances on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” “NBC Nightly News” and “60 Minutes.” Inevitably came a critical backlash.

All this was chronicled in a 1999 documentary, “Speaking in Strings,” filmed by her old friend Paola di Florio. (The documentary was nominated for an Academy Award last year.)

Di Florio got her to talk about the terrible Christmas Day in 1984 when she sliced the tip off the little finger of her left hand while cutting onions and the even more terrible day in 1995 when she tried to commit suicide over a failed relationship and the emptiness of life on the road. (The gun jammed.)

The violinist says she has no regrets or apologies about making such a revealing documentary.

“It was a very personal telling of a particular time in my life,” she said. “I had no idea it would go as far as it went. A lot of things were falling apart at the time. Now, [that period of time] looks like a metamorphosis. I couldn’t be happier now. If she called yesterday, it would be a different movie.”

In fact, the violinist’s been too busy and happy even to brood about turning 40, she says. Among the reasons: In 1999 the classical music world recognized her accomplishments by naming her one of three recipients of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize. Salerno-Sonnenberg, along with violinists Pamela Frank and Sarah Chang, received $50,000. It was the first time that any woman was awarded the prize since it was first given in 1975.

“I’m so grateful for all that’s happening,” she said. “Forty is a wonderful place. But it is a shock. Just yesterday, it seems, I was in high school.”

Has she mellowed in recent years, as some critics have claimed?

“I’ve always played the way I play,” she said. “But about the last four or five years, I’ve branched out and played a lot of different kinds of music as well. It makes your life a lot busier, but coming back to meat and potatoes [the classical repertory], it keeps everything very, very fresh.”

Her collaborations have included working with Mandy Patinkin, Joe Jackson, jazz vocalist Judy Blazer and jazz pianist Bob James. Recently, she also toured with Brazilian duo guitarists the Assads (Los Angeles saw them last February), and with Mark O’Connor on his Concerto for Violin and Fiddle.

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Salerno-Sonnenberg feels it’s her responsibility to fit into the world of her collaborators.

“You have to enter into these kinds of relations with a completely open mind,” she said. “With the Assads, I was terrified to do this project because what Sergio had written was so intricate and difficult, and these two guys have been playing their whole lives, they breathe together.

“But those guys are so gregariously sweet and kind and generous. I’d say, ‘Please, what is this piece about? What should I be thinking?’ [But Sergio] never told me how to play anything. He’d say, ‘It sounds great. Let’s go get a drink.’

“That’s their nature, they’re so Brazilian.”

The three have another tour planned for March, but the closest it gets to Los Angeles will be Palm Desert.

However, she does have another kind of collaboration with a tie to Southern California. It’s theatrical, not musical. She’s underwritten a production of Anne Devlin’s play “Ourselves Alone” (working with Alone Productions and the Los Angeles-based Open Fist Theatre Company), which is running at the Producers Club Theatre in New York.

“Putting this together was a completely new process,” she said. “I had no idea. I thought I’d write a check and wish everybody luck.

“Now I know everything I need to know about producing a small-budget play. Everything that possibly could go wrong has gone wrong. But it’s been so wonderful and rewarding. I go to all the rehearsals and see it coming to life. It’s been one of the great experiences.”

But music, despite the grueling schedule she keeps, remains her first love.

“Traveling so much, physically you can get weak,” she said. “So you need to eat well and sleep well. But it’s a vibrant, exciting way of life and I will do it until I can’t do it anymore.”

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NADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG, with the Pacific Symphony led by Carl St. Clair, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Dates: Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Prices: $19-$52. Phone: (714) 556-2787.