Imagine completing a live recording of one of the most difficult pieces of music to play on the violin, all in one seamless take…at your family cottage.
In a once-in-a-generation achievement, Chinese-Canadian violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou played all 24 of Niccolò Paganini’s legendary caprices in a single, unedited take.
Paganini’s caprices are widely considered to be the most technically demanding violin pieces ever written. Their difficulty was so extreme that in the 19th century, the Italian master was rumoured to be possessed by the devil. “On the day of, you take this deep breath in, and you just never know what’s going to happen,” says Hou. “You never know how the fingers are going to feel, you never know if there’s a different humidity, a different something. I mean, at this level of precision and technical demand, particularly if we want to be expressive and free, sort of spontaneous, and be able to be really in the zone, you have to take risks,” she says.
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Hou first conquered these highly challenging caprices at age 17. She performed them at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music in 1994, and is believed to be the first Canadian, and youngest, to ever play these to precision.
The full 75-minute recording was done at her family cottage in Lake of Bays. “It’s really a transportive experience. I must say it’s like a time manipulation, a dimension manipulation. When you enter that kind of a zone, there’s such hyper focus that everything slows down,” says Hou. “When I listen to it afterwards, it’s quite remarkably different than what I remember in the moment. For instance, it just feels so much faster, like even I myself go, how on earth? How on earth did that happen?”
Knowing where she would want to record a performance like this was easy. “I have to record here,” she recalls thinking about the cottage. “There’s energy here. There’s energy in nature.”
Hou started playing violin when she was four years old, and was taught by her father. Her parents were top violinists in China. Her father even played for Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution. Despite their fame and during the times of unrest during the Cultural Revolution, Hou’s parents came to Canada to pursue their life, and their passion in music. “My father practiced with me, really set that foundation for me. And I know that he taught me to do the impossible. And I really wanted to do this for him.”
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Hou says that every single thing she’s been able to master on the violin was from her father’s teachings. (Her hands are technically too small. She was born Shanghai, but says that The Shanghai Conservatory would not have accepted her as a student.) “[My dad] had to train and optimize the technique for me. That’s why we started the Paganini so early. And as a result, I think I grew into being a violinist.”
Instead of traveling in their later years, Hou’s parents decided to purchase a cottage. “My mom found this beautiful development. The sad thing is that my father never got to enjoy any of it. We saw it being built over four years. And then he passed away a week before we got the keys.”
Hou’s first violin was made of Canadian maple. She wanted to acknowledge the poignancy of doing the project in Muskoka, rather than a random recording studio. “I wanted to realize it there because there’s something really poignant about that,” she says. “And also it resonates, you know. I think it’s the forest, it’s the wood.”
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