From Bach to Brazil with mandolinist Avi Avital

If you've ever listened to bluegrass, you're probably familiar with the mandolin. That it can also be found today on the classical concert stage is largely thanks to one contemporary artist: Avi Avital. He joined forces with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider at the 2023 Beethoven Festival in Bonn to present old, new and genre-blending works that spanned different cultures and time periods. The program included everything from Bach fugues to Balkan rhythms to Afro-Brazilian gods and goddesses.

Avi Avital: Mandolin superstar

Mandolinist Avi Avital was born in Israel in 1978. He began playing the mandolin at age eight and went on to study the instrument in Jerusalem and Padua, Italy. In 2010, he became the first mandolin player ever to be nominated for a Grammy.

A member of the lute family, the mandolin was originally a common folk music instrument. It made its way around the world over centuries, but it's thanks to Avital's expressive and virtuosic playing that it recently exploded onto the classical and new music scenes.

"The mandolin was seen as an amateur instrument throughout music history, so the great composers ... never bothered to write for the mandolin. We don't have a mandolin piece by Bach, Brahms, Schubert," Avital explains. "I don't feel this is justified, and so I think one of my life missions is to change the course of the repertoire of the mandolin and to insert it into the canonic repertoire of classical music by going to living composers and pursue them to write for me, to write for the mandolin."

Avital has commissioned more than 100 works over the past years as a way to cement the mandolin in the classical new music scene.

One such brand-new piece of music is the prelude for solo mandolin, by the contemporary Italian composer Giovanni Sollima; he composed the work specifically for Avital. Sollima drew on Italian dances like the tarantella and the pizzica, which is from Apulia, in southern Italy. The region has a festival dedicated exclusively to this style of music.

Brooklyn Rider: Masters of the old and the new

Similarly to Avital, the members of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider (Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; Michael Nicolas, cello) perform both old and new music, which they believe are complementary.

"One of the ideals you're going for in music is to have a feeling when approaching old music that it is fresh, and you are seeing always new things. But then when you got a brand-new piece of music, you have to very quickly behave as if it's your oldest friend in the world, and that it feels not foreign but familiar," says violist Nicolas Cords.

Brooklyn Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen is also a composer, and one of his compositions, "Time and Again," which he wrote in 2022 for string quartet and mandolin, was featured on the Beethoven Festival program.

"My piece was very much conceived with Avi in mind," he says, explaining that it includes Balkan rhythms yet still maintains classical elements: "For those who are keeping score in form, it is also in a very classical sonata-ish form; those of you who are listening for that, you'll hear it."

Brazilian gods and Bach fugues

The other pieces on the program also spanned cultures and geography. One was "Obrigado," which means "thank you" in Portuguese. It was written by the contemporary Brazilian-American composer, singer and pianist Clarice Assad and pays tribute to the various Afro-Brazilian gods by using musical traditions of the Afro-Brazilian religion called Umbanda.

Another work, "Entr'acte," is by the contemporary American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, who took inspiration from a Haydn quartet. 

But the old was not forgotten among the new, with arrangements of Bach fugues for string quartet and mandolin, and even a Bach chaconne arranged for mandolin making appearances in the program.

No matter what repertoire he's playing, mandolinist Avital feels deeply connected to the instrument in a physical way. "This instrument has soul," he says. "It just reacts to me where it's part of my body."

We hope you enjoyed the works in today's show, which was hosted by Cristina Burack. Thanks to sound engineer Thomas Schmidt and producer Gaby Reucher, and thanks to all of you for listening. If you have any feedback, drop us a line at music@dw.com.

Performances in this recording:

1. Luigi Boccherini
Quintet "Night Music on the Streets of Madrid" in C major, Op. 30, arranged for mandolin and string quartet
Avi Avital, mandolin
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Michael Nicolas, cello

2. Giovanni Sollima
Prelude for Solo Mandolin
Avi Avital, mandolin

3. Caroline Shaw
"Entr'acte" for string quartet
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Michael Nicolas, cello

4. Colin Jacobsen
"Time and Again" for mandolin and string quartet
Avi Avital, mandolin
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Michael Nicolas, cello

5. Johann Sebastian Bach
Nos. 1, 5 and 9 from "The Art of the Fugue," BWV 1080, arranged for string quartet and mandolin
Avi Avital, mandolin
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Michael Nicolas, cello

6. Johann Sebastian Bach
"Chaconne" from Partita No. 2 for violin in D minor, BWV 1004, arranged for mandolin
Avi Avital, mandolin

7. Clarice Assad
"Obrigado," for mandolin and string quartet
I – Opening: Respeito a Gongá (Praise for the Sacred Altar)
II – Opening: Saudação Ao Pai de Santo (Saluting the Father of Spirit)
III – The Orixás: Exú, a Sabio Brincalhao (Exú, the prankish sage)
IV – The Orixás: Mamae Oxum
V – The Orixás: Iemanjá, A Rainha Das Aguas (The Queen of the Seas)
VI – Erê, a crinança (Erê, the child)
VII –Obrigado
Avi Avital, mandolin
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Michael Nicolas, cello

8. Osvaldo Golijov
"Arum dem Fayer" for mandolin and string quartet
Lev (Ljova) Zhurbin
"Love Potion, Expired," arranged for mandolin and string quartet
Avi Avital, mandolin
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola

9. Colin Jacobsen 
"Little Birdie"
Avi Avital, mandolin
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Colin Jacobsen, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Michael Nicolas, cello

10. Antonio Vivaldi
Mandolin Concerto in C major, RV 425
I – Allegro
III - Allegro
Archive No.: 1448176
Avi Avital, mandolin