A Math-Minded Musician

Violinist Joshua Bell has lots going for him: great playing, awards, recordings and matinee idol looks. People Magazine named him one of the “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” and Glamour called him one of the six “It Men of the Millennium.”

But the 33-year-old violinist, who plays Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D with the Pacific Symphony on Wednesday and Thursday, also keeps his brain in high gear.

“I happen to like math, I happen to like analyzing and knowing why things work,” Bell said in a recent phone interview from his loft in New York City. “That’s the antithesis of being instinctual, I guess, or sort of the other side.”

He did start as an instinctual player.

“But as I got older, I got more interested in how things work architecturally. I don’t do much teaching, but when I do, I like to analyze. It makes you think about the things you do naturally.

“When you figure out the reason why you’re doing something, that’s a great feeling. It does happen.”

Bell was born Dec. 9, 1967, in Bloomington, Ind., the middle of three children (he has two sisters) in a very musical family.

“They were not professionals, but everyone played something,” he said. “My mother played piano and accompanied me. My two sisters also played music. That was just a given.”

He began studying the violin (his parents’ choice) when he was 4. By the time he was 12, he was playing well enough to interest legendary pedagogue Josef Gingold, who took him on as a student and raised his talent to another level.

“I’d grown emotionally enough to realize the power of music and how much music meant to me. It stopped being a kind of fun game. It had real meaning to me.

“I began to have these opportunities to play, at first for no money, then for a little bit of money. Then it grew and became a career. That happened without my choosing it. It was inevitable.”

He made his orchestral debut when he was 14, with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and since then has had a string of successes, including a Grammy Award this year for his Sony Classical recording of Nicholas Maw’s Violin Concerto.

His newest recording, a suite from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story,” will be released in June. He will play the work Aug. 21 at the Hollywood Bowl.

The Brahms Concerto is one of his favorites.

“It’s great in every way,” he said. “It has that majestic, epic proportion that the Beethoven does, my other favorite. Yet it’s a little more forgiving, even though it’s more difficult in a technical sense; it’s not as exposed and dangerous as the Beethoven.”

Playing the instrument he now owns, a 1732 Stradivarius, named the “Tom Taylor,” has changed the way he approaches music.

“As I learned to get more colors out of my instrument and got to know my instrument better, that affects how you think about music and you get inspired,” he said.

“The technical and the musical affect each other. They’re so intertwined. I never separate music from technique. You can’t.”

He looks at the overall structure of a piece so that he can tell how everything is linked.

“The way I play something at the beginning will affect how I play something later. Those are fun things to figure out.”

They also make for what he calls a “smart” performance.

“Like a movie director, you feel like everything has its purpose. When you reach the climax, it’s been set up in such a logical way, even though you’re aware of the logic. The good musician will automatically, constantly be building bridges forward.”

Indeed, if a musician doesn’t do that, Bell believes, he doesn’t just get stuck in a rut.

“Things start to erode and you don’t even know they’re eroding,” Bell said. “So you constantly have to question what you’re doing.”

Bell lives in New York but estimates he spends only about 10 days a month there. The rest of the time is spent on the road and concertizing.

“It’s difficult to keep up friendships,” he said. “But I enjoy the traveling. And I have friends around the world. Everywhere I go, I have old friends.”

He said his life has had “some rough patches,” but few ruts.

“I tend not to complain too much,” he said. “I feel so lucky to be doing what I do. I love playing music.”

* Joshua Bell will play Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D with the Pacific Symphony led by Carl St.Clair Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The program also will include Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Michael Daugherty’s “Route 66.” $19 to $57. (714) 556-2787.

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Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at chris.pasles@latimes.com.