[Music] this week I started to work with banini and what I always did to practice something is um I search for a lot of recordings different recordings on the same piece by different violinist in order to understand the logic and the structure of what I'm doing also I get more familiar with the piece and while I was searching in YouTube I came across a version of uh God Save The King by Paganini by violin ning and I watched this and I was completely mesmerized by it [Music] [Applause] and it is a very interesting performance because we have an unusual thing going on and this is what brought me to make this video unfortunately because of copyright reasons we cannot share the whole video here in in this video we cannot put the whole thing but I will cut it in fragments and spread them all through the video um and I will link the video also down below so that you can appreciate it as a whole as soon as I saw this this performance the first thing I I did was also to check the commentaries of the users in YouTube to confirm what I was thinking the first time that I saw this this is a very unusual performance because the audience gets wild the audience uh starts to clap in between the [Music] [Applause] performance the audience talks between uh talks in middle of the performance um the audience goes like whoa in middle of the performance uh the audience loves in middle of the performance and these are huge noos for the classical music world for the non-m musicians or for people that are not so uh familiar with classical music we have a whole protocol right there is a whole etiquette on how to listen to classical music and how to behave during a classical music concert this etiquette is there in order to give classical music the respect it needs so one of the things that you do not do during a classical music concert is to clap between movements back in my times people would not even cough during the performance like when there was a break in between everybody would like at the same time um you don't go you don't sit there with a candy and start like to unwrap the Candy cell phones is a huge noo if you are taking a picture if it's allowed to take pictures you do it without Flash um there is even like there was even a whole etiquette on how to dress for a classical concert um thing you know for a classical music concert I mean as a musician when we sit in the orchestra we generally wear black but the people like the public the audience also wouldn't just go dressed just like that to a concert like there is this whole etiquette and this whole thing and also one of the things that you do not do is talking or laughing or expressing your emotions towards what you are experiencing in it is a thing that you process inside you know so this is these are like established rules and order in the classical music world so if you have attended many concerts you know that this is like this and if you have played in orchestras you know how it is I have been on both sides so I I know and I understand both sides I understand how it is to be a musician sitting in an orchestra and having to focus a lot on what you're doing and that all of a sudden a phone rings or somebody comes late I mean many theaters I think I remember being in music faran here in Austria and uh that they close the doors they don't allow anybody to come in and I agree on that I I find it cool because it brings like all these movement around like sitting here and there takes you out of your concentration out of focus so like one of the reasons why we don't clap also between movements or uh just the middle of the piece is because it breaks the mood it breaks The Vibes so um and that's the thing people are not used to listen to music anymore it doesn't mean it doesn't matter if it's now classical music or any kind of music people are not used to just sit down close the eyes and just appreciate the moment like I always find it funny when people say I will listen to some music and the music is just running in the background you know like when I say I'm listening to music and I just sit there I close the eyes and I'm just like listening but people nowadays they don't listen to music they just put it in the background so what you say about a classical music concert like people that occasionally go there they don't know they are not aware of the rules I mean they also don't have to so yeah so moving around clapping talking whatever brings us as musicians sitting in an orchestra completely out of focus so this is the reason why everybody in the comments is freaking out you're going to see the comments here or you can check them in the video somebody goes like the audience is infuriating then everybody says um God saved the violinist from the audience the audience is just disturbing he should put a recording of This insanely difficult piece without anyone interrupting do you think you have a chance to see someone perform God Save the King in person and also a unique interpretation that audience really doesn't know anything about music one of the hardest songs to play on the violing and they laugh that's just [Music] crazy someone should have shouted quiet for God's sake the audience was so disrespectful not following their basic morals bro pused for a millisecond and the audience started clapping LOL as a fellow new cander embarrassed for immature crowd in the audience why they laugh this piece is so hard so it goes like this for ages everybody's pissed off because people are clapping laughing whatever in middle of the pie but even though I understand this and I understand why everybody's angry I would like to try to understand other aspects of this and try to question the ways we have and try to question a little bit art and etiquettes so first of all we need to I would like to take one of the comments here that say nobody will have the chance to nobody gets the chance to see this live performed and this is true God Save the Queen has been composed by Paganini in the Decades of 1830s or something like that when he was invited to London so um this is from the Paganini scale like the whole Paganini repertoire in my opinion the most difficult piece um his Caprices are already extremely challenging if you like like this is even much more difficult than the Caprices this is like technically extremely difficult [Music] so nobody goes live and plays this because it's too risky nobody takes the risk to play this by heart he's playing by heart um nobody makes this this is way too risky I never had the honor to listen to this piece played um in in public um even if you try to search uh for this piece you will not find many live recordings of it because it's way too complex and it is way too risky so to do this you have to be so sure of your abilities as a musician to just get your violin and play a solo and play God Save the Queen go God Save the King unfortunately I do not know what this uh has been played before but it is obvious that this violinist has performed another violin conto before with the orchestra so basically what happens also part of the etiquette and the tradition is that when you play a concerto and you're The Soloist you play with the orchestra generally coner just have like free movements and when this is done you go you get out of stage and then you come back because the uh generally uh the audience goes like they start to clap all what they did not clap in 45 minutes so they start to clap you leave together with the with the director and then you come back everybody is still clapping so as an appreciation towards the audience as a soloist you take your violin and you you play a piece well I mean I have seen um people that plays like together with the orchestra but generally uh you play a piece for violin solo I have seen a lot of vas I have seen uh I don't know uh Panini capric is and and all these things but never ever anyone came up with the idea of playing God Save the King so God Save the King has been composed by Paganini as I said before in the decade of 1830 and um he was invited to perform in London everybody went crazy when they found out that that Paganini was in London so we need to understand also the essence of banini I made a video of banini before but banini was a showman banini was a rockstar for his time if there would if there if if if back then people would have would have had Instagram then banini would have been a huge influencer that he would be a superstar making pictures of whatever he does and uh he understood the idea of entertainment and he understood the idea of music as entertainment and live concerts as a business and also the idea of an artist as a product so Panini understood this even um there is this huge myth and this huge story that Panini um sold his soul to the devil and he never cared much to um kind of say no this is not like this no no he went with it it he understood that all this blah blah blah going around would kind of place him in another place as an artist and uh he constructed his whole identity all around this you understand what I mean so Panini was somebody that liked the attention Panini was somebody that knew how to play with all these uh things what people were saying about him to construct on top of it so he would dress only black clothes he would wear only black clothes um completely in black um he would have his hairs always open also black hairs long hairs as I mentioned in my video he had a syndrome he had I never remember the name of the syndrome but basically his uh hands were kind of um like you could see every bone and he was very skinny his health was also not the best one so he was very skinny very white so he was kind of a creepy person but at the same time very attractive um so there was a he he constructed his whole personality it was a product he was the product so um every concert that he made would be kind of uh um an entertaining thing it was not just like classical music it was Panini just showing everybody what he can do with the violin right we also need to understand that Panini's techniques back then were a complete shock for everybody because violin playing was completely different back then Panini just pushed the boundaries of violin playing on the instrument it is said that Paganini was able to play whole pieces only on one shink which is completely crazy um all these things that we know from banin Caprices and concerts and sonatas and whatever uh all these things were impossible for the musicians of the time so you need to understand that and you don't you don't have to forget these things bini was a showman he knew what he could do he knew his instrument like more than himself and he showed this and also he did not show this he expected respect for this so um there is one film I mean I did not like to film um I mean it's entertaining but it's not the thing that I really I don't know anyways where David Garett plays the role of banini and it is really cool because at least the the Music is Real uh you know it's like a real a talented extremely talented violinist bla Panini and um the film talks about exactly this trip to London where all this happens so um what is stated there in this film um is true actually I thought at the beginning this might be kind of a it's true there is um this uh Legend this myth I don't know it said I like we don't have any like confirmation from this but many say that this actually happened like when Paganini was in London everybody freaked out he was going around like a rock star and uh all of a sudden he receives a letter from the King inviting him to the Palace to perform for him and it's the freaking King right like everybody would be kind of honored to play for the king but Paganini was like there is no chance in playing for the king and every everybody was like Hey you cannot just like say no to the king it's the king I mean that would be a honor for you that would be like a thing in your career right to perform for the king of England and he was like I will perform for the king of England if the king of England pays my fees like I want so so much money to perform for The King and I expect that money and if he pays me this then I will go to the palace and I will perform for him and everybody was like kind of dude how can you even think about this right and banini was like because of that because he's the king if he's the king then he's allowed for sure he has the money to pay for my work so Paganini was understanding already back then in the 1830s the idea of the Artist as a product you know what I mean so this is not a little information this describes the essence of banini how he was kind of appreciating his own work and even saying no to the king of England um it is uh not really uh bonafied if uh what appears in the film uh when the king when Panini said no to the king and there there is this theory that the king did appear in a normal theater in the theater where Panini was playing since Panini did not go to the palace the king went to Panini to the theater to to listen to him perform we do not have like a confirmation of this um but it is said that it was because of this um trip in London that Panini took the national anthem like God Sav the king and started to perform it and after this after playing the main Melody he goes crazy with I don't know how many variations on the same theme A variation is when you start to make different post strokes and different things with your left hands and double stops and arpegios and left hand picato like a lot of things crazy extremely talented and all this basically as many say improvised there are others that say that he really wrote this sound and then like he performed it like this we actually don't know we cannot we cannot know that unfortunately we cannot even know if the King was present or not when he performed this but despite this Paganini was um basically uh creating this in honor to the English people so when he started to perform this everybody freaked out we need to understand that as I was saying before Panini played a lot with with the idea that everybody was saying that he sold his soul to the devil and um he took this and made his concerts like a huge thing like there are many people that say that padini would not even come from like he would not come to Stage from the regular entrance to the stage but from somewhere else like it was crazy he was and his and his concerts I heard from my Maestro back then that his concerts were like really dark like really so we're talking about the 1870s you know what I mean the idea the concept of devil of of Satan in 187 in the in in the 1830s was crazy everybody was afraid of this so afraid that Paganini was not even buried after like Paganini got buried after five years of his death because his coffin was left in the in a in a in a vault um in a house for 5 years because he was not allowed by the church to be buried on holy grounds so uh this was the level of craziness and so this is what Panini wanted right like Panini was on stage and wanted everybody to go like wow everybody want banini wanted these reactions from the audience banini made this piece not just because he was like cool now I'm going to make something for the English people no this was a huge way of showing his abilities and his talents as a musician he could show in this way that he is indeed possessed by the by the devil and that he's indeed an amazing performer so these reactions are the reactions that panini would have wanted it is known that Panini was kind of the B P of his time like we do appreciate because it's not classical music we find it crazy that there were like young young ladies fainting when they were seeing the PS in the 60s but the same was happening with panini they would see all these things and girls would like scream so much and get so hysterical that they would faint so this is what badini wanteded this is the thing that bini wanted to create from people he was indeed an outstanding and talented person but he was also a businessman and a showman and we do not have to forget this so I do agree with the fact that we have a whole etiquette and that it should be respected mostly because of the performer and to respect his his um how should I say his performance his concentration his effort we just see the final result right that it's 4 minutes long but we don't know the whole we don't see the whole work the whole practice the whole ears probably he started playing when he was three or something like that we always see Maxim benov he was three years old and he was uh uh in in the cellar practicing for hours when he was freeing siia cold he mentions in a in a in a docu film that um he would go out in the night to play in middle of the snow when all kids were already sleeping and back home he was out with his parents like that's the sacrifice and I understand that we that we are silent and that we are like um respecting this and I completely agree on that but it freaks me out somehow and I have been thinking about this it freaks me out that we forget sometimes because we are too attached to the tradition and to etiquette on to this we forget what the what the main goal of art is um when I was in university um I remember I had a professor she told us the importance of the concept of Aura in art so basically she was struggling about paintings right and I'm going to explain this with an example the very first time I got to see monalisa Gonda in Paris I was shocked I I mean she's we we saw 2,000 times Mona Lisa I think it's one of the of the paintings that has been more reproduced All Through The Years um more than any other piece of art you can see Mona Lisa on bags and t-shirts on cups on on notebooks on poster like there are even parodies of Mona Lisa so we have seen the Mona Lisa 2,000 times and everybody gets its own idea of it but a poster is not the real thing as the real thing like jonda is the portrait of a person so um even the real monaa is not the person it's just like a representation of reality right right so um when I saw first Mona Lisa in the lube I was like stuned first of all she's little she's small and she's behind the glass the room is full with people full full full but even though I was standing in a huge group of people trying to come closer and even though she's behind the glass and even though she's little I could understand what what this concept of Aura is and the concept of Aura is um the presence of the energy the subtle energy of the artist uh that still lives all through the centuries and that makes the artist through his art Immortal so that's the concept of Aura and um and if you come closer and if you start to see every line everything made by Leonardo you can see the artist's presence you can feel it in the painting so this is the concept of Aura and like philosophically in art we speak that when you come to feel this subtle energy emanating from the from the piece of art then the the the time barrier it's not non-existent so there is a connection between the Observer and the artist that connects right away so this is a little bit the concept of art probably I felt a completely different thing than the person standing next to me because art is subjective like it is very impossible it's impossible that two people understand art in the same way it's even with beauty like this what for me can be beautiful for another person might be disgusting Beauty and art and all these concepts are very subjective so so um that's the point of art why I I was asking myself why are we doing art why are we what what are what are our intentions when we make art like do we want to like are we just doing art just because we feel like painting something and that's it I mean this would also be valid you know what I mean or are we just doing doing something because we want to express ourselves I mean what I have learned at University in my times as a student is that art is basically an answer it's like a critique to certain period and to certain order established order and to certain things that were going on um if you see expression expressionism it's like a whole critique and a whole answer to a whole period that came before that by them it was considered to be plain for example so they started to make pieces that would reflect the things that were in the human soul but for other artists before expressionism trying to catch the essence of the reality they're seeing that was the art so art changes all through the years so why like if if the the reason of art is showing the deepest things that we have behind even when you play music even when you play music right uh you're playing somebody else's music right but as an artist there is a huge difference between playing music and making music like there is a whole thing in music when you when you study really music um this concept of of musicality this is how the piece should sound this is what we are trying to communicate what we are trying to communicate with the music try to play Toops concerto without emotions try to play B's concerto without the idea of musicality in mind then this W be V of you know many things like B of when you play him it's not about the techniques it's about how you formulate the sentences how you you you have you can say I love you and that's it and you can say hey I love you like it's different things and that's the art that's how we send the message so I was thinking when I saw all this if this if the meaning of art the reason of being of art is to move all these hidden things that we have inside of us as artists and to let others experience things when confronting with our art then why are we so angry if somebody Express expresses their own admiration for what they're listening and in this particular case I would like to share also a story there is uh the story of a little guy that went went with his grandparents to listen to an orchestra and this guy he was the little guy he was um he had autism so there are different ways that autism manifests that some uh some are nonverbal that means that they do not express much or cannot express much or cannot speak but when facing certain stimulating things certain things might come out and this little guy was with his grandparents in a concert and when the orchestra finished um he was and and deci said you know there is this very sacred moment I do enjoy at this moment though when the musician played the last note and when the people start to clap this moment in between it's very mystical um because there is where you feel the aura that I was mentioning before so in between in this sacred silence the guy the little guy went like wow and you can listen to this WOW in middle of the recording because this was being recorded and after this um wow the director was like completely mesmerized by by this and he started a whole campaign to search for the little guy and to see what was going on you know and and then like we had a most like he made a completely positive thing about this to understand the impact of Music in people and art in general not only music but art so um even a guy that is nonverbal somebody that has a condition and cannot express what they want even on a daily basis but then he's so moved he's so moved by that by this art that this most pure childish uh reaction comes out like wow you know like and it's really cute I will try to search the video and try to share it here so with this audience for me it's the same thing uh um I think that if banini would be alive he would have been honored by something like this um of course we are completely influenced by all these uh musical etiquette and protocols and stuff but if even you see the orchestra see the reaction of the play of the see the reaction of the cello player sitting right behind the violinists as soon as as he starts to play the first notes the jello player knows exactly what's coming he knows like dude he's making something uh crazy nobody dares to play this life so everybody sitting in the orchestra that knows the level of difficulty and that knows the huge risk this violinist this violinist is going into that's why he's laughing because he knows like dude and then like everybody's just sitting there if you see the orchest everybody's smiling everybody's like completely moved by this because there like somebody in the comments said there is not many opportunities in life to see this performed in a in a live concert I never in in years of failing playing in in many concerts I have been all through my life in 40 in 34 years I have never heard anybody play this life so um everybody knows right I mean they do not express it like with words because they're musicians and they know how the etiquette is but you can see it in the face everybody's completely astonished by what it's going on and of course this is the ability of the player and this is the the skills of the player and this is like the the the courage of the player to choose this particularly this particular piece um but this is also the aura of Panini coming alive through the artist and that's crazy because that's what Panini wanted I mean and they are saying yeah the audience is laughing because they recognize yeah that's the point they are recognizing the peace they are recognizing that oh this is the national athem I know this and they don't understand May maybe it is true what he's saying maybe they do not understand that this is a piece by Paganini they don't understand the back the background and to be honest they also do not they do not have to not everybody and that's the reason in my opinion why sometimes art becomes elitist because we consider that classical music is only for a certain group of people and this is when I started to get because there is a very thin line between being uh somebody who is fond of Art and being a and being a snob so there is a lot of snobism also around and um not everybody that attends the classical um classical music concert has to be familiar with what it's being played we all had a first time going I I mean I went to many concerts without knowing what it's going going on and that's the reason why I started to make these videos because like many people listen to chovsky and they go like whoa you know when they listen the cannons in in the Overture you know but uh but nobody knows what it's representing so it is an art to discover what there is behind classical music but classical music should not go uh should not only be for a certain group of people there are amazing people out there like I follow I I really love to said violin I love a lot of people that are making amazing work in bringing classical music even to I mean for example in two set violins a lot of things are like for violinists especially because we get the jokes but uh they make a huge job bringing classical music for those who are not classical musicians and uh this is priceless because after years we are still trying to bring artart in a simplified way to people that do not have much idea of it and that's completely okay I don't have the slightest idea about many things so that's the thing it's nice to educate people but to call an audience ignorant because you're reacting to this Aura of banin Works knowing also how Panini was that he would have enjoyed this because that's what he wanted to call them ignorant or to call them like whatever like not respectful or so it's in my opinion also kind of insulting first of all not anybody not everybody needs to know what's going on it's true and that's the thing that's the aspect that's what Panini wanted he took a piece that it's completely well well known because it's the freaking National athem of UK while he was performing in London and he took this because everybody would identify that that's the point you can compare you can see the plain theme that it's played at the beginning no and then you can see all the variations because you know the theme you are able even even even though you're not a musician you are able to identify the virtuis that comes after that and that's the effect that's the the contrast that banini wants to create with this piece so I understand that art has a lot of etiquette and protocols and stuff but how long like is it really necessary to get stuck to structures that were functioning 200 years ago and that functions with certain artists and stuff but is it not mediocre to kind of stuck into this structure and not to move out of that without even turning the brain on and kind of asking ourselves hey what's actually going going on I do I do agree that it's kind of a Pity also for the performer at the end when you see this face you know that he's not happy at all um I'm sure he was not as focused at as he would have liked to be and he's kind of disappointed but um this is indeed an amazing performance and I yeah it's it's kind of sad that he he had this moment this highlight in his career where he says okay I'm going to play this and the audience goes like whoa but also at the same time dude I don't know like this was your choice and and this is a piece that I mean what for some of you might be unrespectful for me in the way I see it with all these thoughts I shared before this is for me a way of appreciating art much more than just being silent and and and like swallowing all your thoughts what's going on like this is art art imp pure State this is something going on in front of you and all an art itself the aura the spir spirit of banini like you know like poking your heart and saying hey this is amazing and then all these emotions come out so maybe we should start to think art as I always say place in its time and context time space and Circumstance you know so in my opinion I wouldn't be so stubborn with this uh idea that the audience has being completely unrespectful because in this case I see art being art as like art triggering all our instincts to the point that we need to admire and to express the whole admiration so maybe it is time that we kind of start to come out of certain patterns that we have installed in our head and in our system and instead of criticizing so much the audience because of being rude or whatever maybe it's more time that those who criticize the audience start to educate the audience in some way because not everybody knows not everybody needs to know like if you are are wanting to perform for people that know classical music then you're turning music to be something completely elitist and then you are excluding people from art and this is not art this is noism so um this is my opinion on it my humble opinion so yeah I hope I do not get crucified for this but this is the way I it and that's it [Music]