MOST people watch costume dramas for the busty heroines, dashing gents, beautiful staging or racy storylines. But David Juritz watches them to spot his own outfits.
As director and violin soloist for the Mozart Festival Orchestra, he regularly performs in period dress and often discovers items he has worn on stage popping up on TV.
“A few years ago, I had the waistcoat that Nigel Hawthorne wore in the Madness of King George,” he says.
“Whenever I’m at home on a Sunday evening watching the costume dramas, I’m always looking out for my jacket.”
Tonight, he is performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Philharmonic Hall under (fake) candlelight.
“I think people forget audiences listen with their eyes also,” says Juritz.
“I wish the audience could see the band getting changed to go on stage, getting into all the period costume and putting the wigs on.
“It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve done it, people are still laughing and acting up and somehow getting into their performing personality.”
The South African violinist has performed the set of four concertos more than 250 times.
But the Liverpool audience need not worry about tonight’s show sounding tired – he insists he never gets bored of playing them.
“It’s one of the greatest pieces written for solo violin,” he says.
“I’m still amazed at the imagination that Vivaldi had.
“You have to give yourself a challenge and keep on exploring different corners and I always force myself to change bits every night.
“It might be the way you shape a phrase, the contours of a melody. It might be something as simple as saying, ‘Well, last night we played this bit loud so we’ll play it very quietly’.”
Isn’t there a danger of this becoming a purely academic exercise at the cost of the audience’s experience?
Juritz says not.
“After you’ve played a piece of music around 40 times, you probably do feel that you’ve done everything you could possibly imagine and at that point I realised I would have to start bringing in approaches to the music that I didn’t necessarily agree with,” he explains.
“But I found when you start absorbing ideas which you might not naturally take on board it gives you another dimension.”
While the Four Seasons is one of the world’s best- known pieces of classical music, there may be some details of Vivaldi’s early-18th century concertos that listeners are not aware of.
Juritz describes the work as “a painting in music”.
“He takes all sorts of images – it could be a dog barking or a thunderstorm or mosquitoes buzzing – and sometimes there’s a musical representation of the idea or sometimes it will be sound effects.
“You’ve got incredible freedom as a performer.”
Experience of playing with the same musicians for four years also helps, he adds.
“We know each other really well, so I know I can try things out,” he says.
“The opening movement of Autumn is a drinking party so I have to do the drunken violinist bit and me and the principal cello, who have to bounce off one another, are constantly trying to catch each other out.”
FOUR Seasons by Candlelight is at the Philharmonic Hall tonight. Read a review of the show in Monday’s Daily Post.
