“You know me from somewhere,” the violin virtuoso Ivri Gitlis remarked to me a decade ago. We soon found ourselves sailing into the hot summer of ’82, when he, who is considered the first child of the Eretz Israel wonder, came as usual to appear before the soldiers in Operation Peace of the Galilee and on the way to a performance in Lebanon we had a fascinating conversation.
I remembered this yesterday when the news came from Paris that a day after the departure of Rika Zarai, our other cultural ambassador in the City of Lights, the sounds of the 9813-year-old Gitlis’ Stradivarius violin, who, as his name implies, remained forever – the great man of the world.
“When the first Lebanon war broke out, I could not bear to stay at home, in Paris and I had to come here, as in previous Israeli wars – and see what happens here,” he recalled in an interview a decade ago. “I put in a disappointment Sabin, my wife at the time (he was divorced three times, a father of four – Y. B.A.), with our children, including one-year-old Jonathan and a quarter – and forward to Beirut!”
Such was Gitlis, a colorful type, whose Hebrew was intertwined with quite a bit of goat and he claimed he had no problem of identity. “Everywhere I am presented as an Israeli and hold only Israeli citizenship, unlike other nationalists who have left the country and hold dual citizenship,” he said. “First of all I am Israeli, period. Just as I will not change the color of my eyes, I will not change my passport.”
It probably does not make life easier, I remarked.
“True, it’s not easy like that,” he responded. “Maybe it’s idiotic, but I insist …”
Haifa has always been beautiful to him. Yitzhak-Meir Gitlis was born there in 22 ‘to parents from Russia, who were the pioneers of the third aliyah. He was five years old when he asked his parents for a violin. His father, who worked in a flour mill, fulfilled what he wanted and his mother, a music lover, propelled the wheels of his career. The first to notice his talent was a friend of the family, the Haifa-based composer Moshe Bik (“A Song for the Valley”, “For Mother’s Homeland”). Among his teachers was Mira Ben-Ami, the apprentice of Joseph the Great, who noticed his erupting talent.
There was nothing in the country to do with such talent. One day his mother came to Ben-Ami and told her excitedly that the famous violinist Bronislaw Huberman, later the founder of the Philharmonic, had arrived in Israel. The two wasted no time and the next day felt in the ceremonies, he said, the Dead Sea, there soul. While dipping his feet in the salt water, they told him about the wonders of the jewel from the slopes of the Carmel. The next day, Huberman examined him at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and sent him to study in Paris.
The local artists, led by Hannah Rubina, held performances to fund the lift ride and his mother. Gitlis, who studied in Paris, where he came with his mother in ’34, with great violin teachers, including the Romanian composer Georges Unsko, was not the only prodigy from Eretz Israel at the time. At the same time, she studied piano in Pnina Salzman, his yearbook. “As a kid, I used to be a little bit in love with her,” admitted Gitlis, the timeless womanizer. “She was beautiful and talented and they saw she was a personality.”
Salzman is back from Paris to Israel – and you are staying in Europe !, I remarked to him.
“Yes, these are the circumstances of life,” he replied in a sober tone. “When World War I broke out, Pnina was just in Israel performing with the Eretz Israel Orchestra. In contrast, my mother and I got stuck in Paris. Two days before the Germans entered, we fled south, to Jacques Tibo, who was one of my teachers. When the Germans also approached occupied southern France, we succeeded. To catch the last ship that left for England. “
Gitlis, then an 18-year-old boy, sought to contribute his share to the war effort. “I wanted to serve in the Air Force,” he testified. “But when they saw that my eyes were not good enough to be an a-pilot (pilot), they put me as a worker in an ammunition factory. Luckily the violin stayed with me and after a while I switched to playing for the soldiers.”
When a man in London feared a German invasion, his mother offered to change his name to exile. “I was not afraid of the bandits, but I obeyed my mother,” he noted. “I would never change a foreign name because of them. If I change, then specifically towards me!”
The war is over. His mother immediately returned to Israel and Gitlis remained in Europe. After a concert with the London Philharmonic, his career soared to the top. As a violinist, he loved Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and other classical composers. But since his recording of Alban Berg’s work has won an important international award, he has often been identified with contemporary music. “In music I am not a missionary, but play what I love,” he explained. I usually like what I’m playing at the moment. If you are good, you are good for everything. “
Gitlis, who has performed with some of the most important orchestras in the world, was known for the response that accompanied his playing. This led him in ’68 to play with the Rolling Stones in a film that was filmed on them, starring John Lennon and Eric Clapton. “My two boys play rock ‘n’ roll,” he remarked.
What about you and the Rolling Stones? I was amazed.
“One day at a party in Paris I met Brian Jones from their band, a nice guy who wanted to learn to play the violin from me. After a while he called me and asked if I was willing to participate in the band’s film. And with them – what an improvisation. Eric Clapton and John Lennon were there too. Suddenly Yoko Ono came and kicked them all out with her screams … ”
A broadcast of the Tel Aviv Museum Hall was broadcast on the Internet, in which the audience was asked to turn off their cell phones. An elderly Gitlis is seen addressing the audience as … one of Degania’s veterans with a heavy Russian accent. “Contact with the audience is important to me,” he clarified. “I don’t like the distance in the big halls. In Mozart’s days, the audience was within touching distance of the musicians.”
Gitlis had a side career as a … film actor. Among his films in ’75 was “The Story of Adele H.”, a film by François Truffaut, in which he played a mesmerizing speaker … Hebrew. In 2009, with the participation of director Sandra Juxa, she created the documentary “Fiddler Beyond All Ability”.
What suddenly became an actor? – I was intrigued.
“It’s because a person has to go through three things in life,” he replied. “I mean, play in a movie, go through at least one night in … a jail and spend a night in an intensive care unit in a hospital to know how to appreciate life. I went through everything.”
Were you in jail?!, I wondered.
“You will not believe, but twice!”, He responded mischievously. “Once in Cuba of the beginning of Castro’s rule and years later – in Spain of the end of Franco’s rule. If I am with you now, it’s a sign that it was not so terrible.”