By Colin Cooper
The Bosnian guitarist Denis Azabagic made a considerable name for himself by winning an abnormally high number of competitions before embarking on his professional career. The experience was useful and provided many oppotunities that might not otherwise have come his way. But it is the name that you make afterwards, when you have finished with competitions, that is important. Denis Azabagic has never lost sight of that essential truth.
I met him in Belgrade, where he and his wife, the Valencian flute player Eugenia Moliner, gave a recital of remarkable interest and musical content — one of the highlights of the festival, in fact. Eugenia Moliner matches her husband in musical and technical skill. She has the strong valencian temperament, outspoken, forward-looking, a firm and well-defined sense of priorities. But these qualities are more noticeable in a flute player, who can move fluently around the platform, unlike the guitarist who is normally rooted to the same spot throughout a recital. One of the works in their recital requires the flute player to move between three music stands: it concentrated the attention of the audience to a remarkable degree.
Denis Azabagic: Since we started playing and getting more serious about the duo, about six years ago, we decided to explore as much original repertoire as possible. As a result, our first CD was made up of compositions by those composers, and compositions that were originally written for this combination, starting of course with Piazzolla: Rodrigo, the Sonata by the Russian composer Edison Denisov, the Spanish composer Alejandro Yagüe, which we played at this festival (Belgrade) on the opening night....
Eugenia Moliner: ...Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea for alto flute and guitar.
DA: For a long time we shared the same ideals in trying to maintain this kind of approach. We still have them. But since then we’ve managed to acquire a number of pieces by David Leisner, and by a friend of mine from Sarajevo, Denis Sparavalo. Friends and composers who have composed or arranged music dedicated to us include Alejandro Yagüe, Michael Karmon, Carlos Rivera, Sérgio Assad and Erik Otte.
We also realised there could be a great deal to be explored in arrangements, and we were fortunate to have Sérgio Assad arrange these Flute Studies by Piazzolla, which were written originally for flute; Sérgio wrote the guitar part. So, we are now open to such transcriptions — if they interest us.
You mentioned contemporary repertoire, but the flute and guitar combination has a lot of other things from the 19th century, which we are not at the moment interested in.
I was struck by a strong element of theatre in the piece by Yagüe, in which the flute player moved between three music stands, one to the right of the guitarist, one to the left and one behind. I believe the three stands represent three towns in the province of Burgos, each threatened with extinction by the construction of a new dam. It caught the eye as well as the ear. Are you going to develop this side of public performance in any systematic way?
EM: No. This is not something I chose to do. The composer wants the player to go from music stand to music stand, turning around. He wants to make a stereophonic effect. That is what is written in the score. We were both very lucky to play for him in Burgos, which is his town. Two years ago we were invited play there, with the Philharmonic society of Burgos. It was the premiere of this piece there, and he was greatly surprised that we actually did what he had written in the score, that somebody had dared to walk across the stage playing and turning at the same time. This is exactly what I do, not because I like to have fun on the stage, no. I want to play my notes and do music, but If this is what the composer writes I'll do it.
But you did like doing it?
EM: Exactly. I loved it.
DA: What we do like is, to joke with each other and with the audience during the concert, in between the pieces… I don’t think this undermines classical music, the seriousness of it, or the greatness of it. It loosens up both the performers and the public. If you find something to joke about, or to notice about the place where you play. Whatever comes in kind of spontaneously way , we talk about.
EM: But in this piece by Yagüe, he writes in the score the story behind it. we like to talk about that and explain why I dance around when I play.
Do you feel it draws the audience in more, in some ways, than the music would be by itself?
DA: I think it does. Of course, when you only listen to something, when you close your eyes, there is nothing to see. You just listen. But if you combine it with this visual thing — people are usually sitting down or standing in one place, but this is another thing. He’s asking the flute to go around, and turn, and of course it’s something new. I think it brings something else, especially when you know the story of the piece, the so-called ‘drowning’ of the three villages. That passage the flute plays as she walks around is like the sound of water resonating, in and out, in and out.
Do you think it’s something that could help to bring people back to the concert hall?
EM: If you are going to listen to concert, you are also going to visualise it. If you want just listen, you buy a CD; you close your eyes and listen. Any live performance is visual too anyway.
The way you talk between the pieces is perhaps another aspect of this?
EM: We like to perform our music in this way. We like explaining what we are going to do. We like to be relaxed. I think classical music is changing. The audiences are changing as well.
Before, and I think many people still do, they tried to keep this big distance between the performer and the public; you know, performers are in another world. I think you can do that, you can be in another world, another dimension, through your music, but you have to show your human side. I like to show the public my personality….
To show that you’re human, not simply a machine for producing music?
EM. Exactly!
Can you say something about the origins of the Cavatina Duo?
EM: Denis and I met in Rotterdam in October 1991.
DA: Eugenia went to study in the Netherlands, because she had heard that there was a great flute school there. She auditioned and she was accepted, and she began her studies at Rotterdam Conservatory. In the summer of 1991 war broke out in former Yugoslavia. I went to the Netherlands to avoid it; I went to the same conservatory, so that’s how we met.
The job in Chicago came much later?
DA: Much later. In ’99 we moved to Chicago. I was appointed about two years ago in Chicago, at the Roosevelt University, and I’ve been working there since September 2002. There are four guitar teachers there, and one of them is Sérgio Assad. I must say, I’m very fortunate to have him as a colleague. I’m very, very honored. There are four guitar faculty in our department, including Pamela Kimmel and Paul Henry.
EM: We are very fortunate to have him around. Above everything, he is a fantastic person and a wonderful musician. A very good mentor. Every time we have a new piece, we ask: ‘Sérgio, could you please listen to us?’ And he’s so nice, because you always realize how much you still have to learn.
DA: It’s very good to have somebody who is a good musician listen to you.
EM: I feel very humble next to him. He is great! He knows such a lot of music.
DA: You learn a piece and you think you played it fairly well, and he finds so many things. It’s a great feeling. I remember when I was 16 or 17 and I started studying privately with Vojislav Ivanovic, one of the composers here at the Belgrade festival. I was going home after the first lesson, thinking ‘My God, how much more there is to learn!’ I was one year with him, then I went to Zagreb and Darko Petrinjak. After the first lesson with Darko — the same feeling: ‘My God, how much I still have to learn!’. Then some years ago I studied with Eugenia’s flute teacher, Jo Hagen. And it was a different perspective, but again that same feeling.
EM: When we are with Sérgio, we never think he is a guitarist. We think of him as a musician, somebody who can analyse music so well because he’s a composer himself. He can look at the music from so many different perspectives and open up our minds. It’s really great, and we are very lucky.
CC: How do you find the teaching in the USA compares with what you knew before?
DA: In the US there Is a structure from college on, from the age of 18. Before that, it 's a private initiative. The only music you would have in the elementary schools or the high schools would be in the band, and the music teacher would give you some lessons. The music teacher would be someone who knew how to play the piano, and perhaps studied a little bit of flute or a little bit of saxophone or violin. And he’s teaching you guitar. Then the kids go to a private academy or take lessons. As I mentioned earlier, I liked a lot the system in former Yugoslavia, where music education was available in music schools to those who wanted to attend, and it was really well structured: elementary music school, secondary music school, academy of music. So, you could (and still can) start with the music education from an early age and be guided by a good teachers and schooling.
CC: Where did you yourself start?
DA: In Tuzla, Bosnia with Pedrag Stankovic a very dedicated teacher. Then I went to music school in Sarajevo where I studied with Mila Rakanovic and for a year with Vojislav Ivanovic. After Sarajevop I attended Music Academy in Zagreb, for a year with Darko Petrinjak. In 1991 war broke out In former Yugoslavia, and I left the country and ended up in Netherlands, where I studied at Rotterdam's Conservatory. Guitar teacher there was Dick Hogeeven, and as I mentioned earlier I spent considerable time learning from Eugenia's flute teacher, Jo Hagen.
It’s very important to have good teachers from a very early age.
Who was your flute teacher, Eugenia?
EM: It wouldn’t be fair if I mentioned only one. The biggest influences in my flute playing have been, Jaime Martín, who lives in London and plays in one of the best orchestras there, The Academy of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields. I met him just before I went to the Netherlands. He himself studied in Holland, and is the person who encouraged me to go and study abroad.
There I met my professor, Jo Hagen, the principal flutist of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Although he’s not very well known, he’s a fantastic musician, very very good. There I met a great pianist, Jan Gruithuizen. I also had lessons with a Belgian flutist called Els Van Zunder. She’s also very good and helped me a lot. Just to mention somebody else from England: Kate Hill plays in the English Chamber Orchestra, a wonderful person and a wonderful flutist. She also gave me a lot of encouragement to study abroad.
And after that?
DA: After we finished our studies, for a long time we kind of helped each other. Over the next seven or eight years I went to about 35 competitions, and Eugenia accompanied me to many of them, to encourage me, to criticise me — in a very constructive way. When I complained about my nails, she said ‘I don’t care, just get it out!’ — you know.
You won a lot of competitions. I hope you gave her some of the prize money.
DA: I married her!
How many competitions did you win?
DA: Ten, I would say....
EM: ...Seven second prizes, six or seven third prizes. Denis has just published a book called ‘On Competitions’ (Mel Bay). And I must say, he is very humble. He didn’t mention any competition that he won before he was 19. He did win competitions in Italy and Greece, but they were student competitions and he doesn’t mention them. He only mentions big international competitions; he doesn’t want to mention the others. He is very humble in that sense.
EM: I did actually do one, in 1994. From an experience point of view, it went very well. I didn’t win it. I did other competitions with Denis. We won a chamber music competition, in Rotterdam. And that’s it. I really didn’t focus on competitions.
DA: A competition has its benefits, but it’s not absolutely vital. For example, I started the process of learning the guitar when I was six years old. In Yugoslavia, which included competitions for young pupils and students, I felt there was always a goal for which to practise and to be excited about.
From very early on we had a music education system in former Yugoslavia that would allow us to compete, to compare, whatever. So we had those kinds of federal competitions. I started to go to them when I was ten or eleven. As a kid you look at those things quite differently then when you go to an international competition at the age of 19.
Eugenia and I have a quite different past in our development as musicians. She started learning the flute when she was 15 years old. But I always say that she has that spirit that I will never possess. I learn from her in different ways. So, you make it, with competitions or without them; it’s just your spirit, your determination, whether you want to do it.
There are so many guitar competitions. Would you agree the best thing they do is to give you opportunities to play?
EM: Some of them do. Others just offer you the cash prize — and you forget about that.
But you meet people, you hear them play...
DA: ...And they hear you.
EM: But a competition by itself —If you don’t work afterwards, Nothing! You know, because If you don’t keep on fighting, working hard with your instrument, increasing your repertoire. No matter how many competitions you have won, that’s not going to make your career.
How many competitions are there? How many winners? Where are those winners?
DA: Anything you want to do in terms of your career — if you want to get some concerts, you are competing against other people who want to get a concert. It’s the normal thing if you want to get a job: you are competing against others. Everything is competition! But a music competition is a very particular position, where you get very, very nervous. Some people are better than others in controlling the situation. It’s a kind of mental part, it doesn’t mean that they are better musicians.
EM: Going back to our duo, to what we do. I think one of the things that is going to help us — and is helping us — to be successful in what we are doing, is that we are together and that we work as intensely as we do. Very often people who play very well get together just for a few concerts, the result can never be the same as it is for people who are constantly working together. People that have been working together for many years come to know each other so well that there is something special about their music making. When we started taking the duo seriously, we heard many people discouraging us— because many people didn’t believe the flute and guitar could have a career as a chamber music group. But if you love and believe what you do, you find the way. Like finding out that there is so much interesting repertoire there to be discovered, and so many beautiful sounds to be heard. We enjoy playing together, and that is the point, you know. To enjoy what you do.
CC: Do you play apart sometimes, solo or in ensemble?
EM: Yes. I play with piano sometimes. I have my repertoire with pianists. In fact, my first solo CD with piano is coming out very soon. And Denis plays solo recitals, and with orchestra as well. We also perform with a trio, flute, guitar and viola.
CC: This is music you play from choice, not necessity?
EM: Exactly. I chose to play music because I love it. I can’t live without it. There is no question.
DA: You know Fabio Zanon, of course? He came to visit us some years ago; we worked together at a festival in Florida, and he came to stay in Chicago for a few days. It’s sometimes very nice to spend time with your colleagues away from the festival. And he said, ‘You know, you don’t choose music; music chooses you’. It’s really like that. He put it very nicely. You make some conscious decisions, but what is pushing you, what gives you his kind of drive? Is it something beyond reason?
EM: Of course, when you have more concerts you fulfill many dreams. Being better known means more concerts — this is a dream we have as students, to go around the world and play concerts.
CC: In many ways you are more fortunate than orchestral musicians.
EM: I think I am. I'm happy with what I do now.
DA: Eugenia had some of her colleagues, some of her friends who got orchestral jobs, and recently they were saying "I’m quite fed up with the job, where you come and you rehearse and you do what you are told".
CC: There are some personalities who like the security.
EM: We don’t have that security, but there is one thing that we do have. I believe more and more in what I do. This also brings me confidence.
DA: I don’t believe any more in security.
EM: What is security? Even the orchestra doesn’t have it.
DA: The orchestra could go bankrupt.
EM: There are many good things about playing in an orchestra: you learn a lot, you meet a lot of great musicians, but it’s just not for everybody.
CC: Do you go to many festivals?
DA: Not that many, but it’s becoming more and more.
EM: We did a tour in Taiwan, eight concerts in two weeks. We were hired by a music agency, nothing to do with the guitar. It’s not that I have anything against the guitar world, but we are trying to do more in the chamber music world. We are being invited in chamber music series, and this is what we really like to do. To have a general audience. We like to be appreciated also because we are doing something new. Many people consider this combination to be background music for a wedding, and they are very surprised when they listen to us.
I should mention that in our first recording, all the composers whose music we played — none of them are guitarists. Why would these people, like Toru Takemitsu or Edisson Denissov very successful composers, write music for flute and guitar?they like It like many others and believe it’s possible, it’s a nice combination. But who is playing their music? I think there is only one recording of the Sonata by Denisov, the one we did.
DA: I think music is written for people to enjoy. I don’t think the music is there for a small group of professionals to appreciate and therefore to criticise or to look at from a very high standard because they understand it, because they are professionals. I think it’s more for the general audience to enjoy. As I think Picasso said, "art takes up the dust from the soul". It’s amazing sometimes, when you play for people, that the greatest compliment you get is from a general audience. You are of course very happy and very satisfied when an esteemed colleague comes to you and congratulates you, pays tribute and so on, but the person who is not a musician comes and tells you — I remember one moment when I was playing in my home town three or four years ago, after the war and all that, it was still fresh in the people’s memories and hearts. And all this came after the concert when they said, ‘You know, for an hour and a half we forgot where we were. We forgot about everything, and we were somewhere else.’
That was the biggest compliment I ever had. And I think that’s important. That’s why Eugenia says our goal is, not to be in any way condescending towards the guitar world. I come from there, but it’s still a small world. In any profession, if you stay within that profession, it’s a small world. But if you manage to play for a general audience, regardless of the origin of the guitar or any other instrument, that’s the beauty of it: that’s who we should be playing for. I think that’s how music survives. Especially in these days, because of the younger generation, because of the media, the TV, the internet, the computers — you know, people are bombarded with the multi-media events, things that involve all the senses. I’m just waiting for the tactile sense to start getting involved, with Virtual Reality — then maybe smell, who knows?
Music is just one very subtle way of reaching people. We have to attract the younger audience — but how, I don’t know. Sometimes that happens, as it did recently in Taiwan, I would say that 80 per cent of those people were students, teenagers: very young. I was so happy to see that kind of audience at the concerts, getting excited about our music.
The Bosnian guitarist Denis Azabagic made a considerable name for himself by winning an abnormally high number of competitions before embarking on his professional career. The experience was useful and provided many oppotunities that might not otherwise have come his way. But it is the name that you make afterwards, when you have finished with competitions, that is important. Denis Azabagic has never lost sight of that essential truth.
I met him in Belgrade, where he and his wife, the Valencian flute player Eugenia Moliner, gave a recital of remarkable interest and musical content — one of the highlights of the festival, in fact. Eugenia Moliner matches her husband in musical and technical skill. She has the strong valencian temperament, outspoken, forward-looking, a firm and well-defined sense of priorities. But these qualities are more noticeable in a flute player, who can move fluently around the platform, unlike the guitarist who is normally rooted to the same spot throughout a recital. One of the works in their recital requires the flute player to move between three music stands: it concentrated the attention of the audience to a remarkable degree.
Denis Azabagic: Since we started playing and getting more serious about the duo, about six years ago, we decided to explore as much original repertoire as possible. As a result, our first CD was made up of compositions by those composers, and compositions that were originally written for this combination, starting of course with Piazzolla: Rodrigo, the Sonata by the Russian composer Edison Denisov, the Spanish composer Alejandro Yagüe, which we played at this festival (Belgrade) on the opening night....
Eugenia Moliner: ...Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea for alto flute and guitar.
DA: For a long time we shared the same ideals in trying to maintain this kind of approach. We still have them. But since then we’ve managed to acquire a number of pieces by David Leisner, and by a friend of mine from Sarajevo, Denis Sparavalo. Friends and composers who have composed or arranged music dedicated to us include Alejandro Yagüe, Michael Karmon, Carlos Rivera, Sérgio Assad and Erik Otte.
We also realised there could be a great deal to be explored in arrangements, and we were fortunate to have Sérgio Assad arrange these Flute Studies by Piazzolla, which were written originally for flute; Sérgio wrote the guitar part. So, we are now open to such transcriptions — if they interest us.
You mentioned contemporary repertoire, but the flute and guitar combination has a lot of other things from the 19th century, which we are not at the moment interested in.
I was struck by a strong element of theatre in the piece by Yagüe, in which the flute player moved between three music stands, one to the right of the guitarist, one to the left and one behind. I believe the three stands represent three towns in the province of Burgos, each threatened with extinction by the construction of a new dam. It caught the eye as well as the ear. Are you going to develop this side of public performance in any systematic way?
EM: No. This is not something I chose to do. The composer wants the player to go from music stand to music stand, turning around. He wants to make a stereophonic effect. That is what is written in the score. We were both very lucky to play for him in Burgos, which is his town. Two years ago we were invited play there, with the Philharmonic society of Burgos. It was the premiere of this piece there, and he was greatly surprised that we actually did what he had written in the score, that somebody had dared to walk across the stage playing and turning at the same time. This is exactly what I do, not because I like to have fun on the stage, no. I want to play my notes and do music, but If this is what the composer writes I'll do it.
But you did like doing it?
EM: Exactly. I loved it.
DA: What we do like is, to joke with each other and with the audience during the concert, in between the pieces… I don’t think this undermines classical music, the seriousness of it, or the greatness of it. It loosens up both the performers and the public. If you find something to joke about, or to notice about the place where you play. Whatever comes in kind of spontaneously way , we talk about.
EM: But in this piece by Yagüe, he writes in the score the story behind it. we like to talk about that and explain why I dance around when I play.
Do you feel it draws the audience in more, in some ways, than the music would be by itself?
DA: I think it does. Of course, when you only listen to something, when you close your eyes, there is nothing to see. You just listen. But if you combine it with this visual thing — people are usually sitting down or standing in one place, but this is another thing. He’s asking the flute to go around, and turn, and of course it’s something new. I think it brings something else, especially when you know the story of the piece, the so-called ‘drowning’ of the three villages. That passage the flute plays as she walks around is like the sound of water resonating, in and out, in and out.
Do you think it’s something that could help to bring people back to the concert hall?
EM: If you are going to listen to concert, you are also going to visualise it. If you want just listen, you buy a CD; you close your eyes and listen. Any live performance is visual too anyway.
The way you talk between the pieces is perhaps another aspect of this?
EM: We like to perform our music in this way. We like explaining what we are going to do. We like to be relaxed. I think classical music is changing. The audiences are changing as well.
Before, and I think many people still do, they tried to keep this big distance between the performer and the public; you know, performers are in another world. I think you can do that, you can be in another world, another dimension, through your music, but you have to show your human side. I like to show the public my personality….
To show that you’re human, not simply a machine for producing music?
EM. Exactly!
Can you say something about the origins of the Cavatina Duo?
EM: Denis and I met in Rotterdam in October 1991.
DA: Eugenia went to study in the Netherlands, because she had heard that there was a great flute school there. She auditioned and she was accepted, and she began her studies at Rotterdam Conservatory. In the summer of 1991 war broke out in former Yugoslavia. I went to the Netherlands to avoid it; I went to the same conservatory, so that’s how we met.
The job in Chicago came much later?
DA: Much later. In ’99 we moved to Chicago. I was appointed about two years ago in Chicago, at the Roosevelt University, and I’ve been working there since September 2002. There are four guitar teachers there, and one of them is Sérgio Assad. I must say, I’m very fortunate to have him as a colleague. I’m very, very honored. There are four guitar faculty in our department, including Pamela Kimmel and Paul Henry.
EM: We are very fortunate to have him around. Above everything, he is a fantastic person and a wonderful musician. A very good mentor. Every time we have a new piece, we ask: ‘Sérgio, could you please listen to us?’ And he’s so nice, because you always realize how much you still have to learn.
DA: It’s very good to have somebody who is a good musician listen to you.
EM: I feel very humble next to him. He is great! He knows such a lot of music.
DA: You learn a piece and you think you played it fairly well, and he finds so many things. It’s a great feeling. I remember when I was 16 or 17 and I started studying privately with Vojislav Ivanovic, one of the composers here at the Belgrade festival. I was going home after the first lesson, thinking ‘My God, how much more there is to learn!’ I was one year with him, then I went to Zagreb and Darko Petrinjak. After the first lesson with Darko — the same feeling: ‘My God, how much I still have to learn!’. Then some years ago I studied with Eugenia’s flute teacher, Jo Hagen. And it was a different perspective, but again that same feeling.
EM: When we are with Sérgio, we never think he is a guitarist. We think of him as a musician, somebody who can analyse music so well because he’s a composer himself. He can look at the music from so many different perspectives and open up our minds. It’s really great, and we are very lucky.
CC: How do you find the teaching in the USA compares with what you knew before?
DA: In the US there Is a structure from college on, from the age of 18. Before that, it 's a private initiative. The only music you would have in the elementary schools or the high schools would be in the band, and the music teacher would give you some lessons. The music teacher would be someone who knew how to play the piano, and perhaps studied a little bit of flute or a little bit of saxophone or violin. And he’s teaching you guitar. Then the kids go to a private academy or take lessons. As I mentioned earlier, I liked a lot the system in former Yugoslavia, where music education was available in music schools to those who wanted to attend, and it was really well structured: elementary music school, secondary music school, academy of music. So, you could (and still can) start with the music education from an early age and be guided by a good teachers and schooling.
CC: Where did you yourself start?
DA: In Tuzla, Bosnia with Pedrag Stankovic a very dedicated teacher. Then I went to music school in Sarajevo where I studied with Mila Rakanovic and for a year with Vojislav Ivanovic. After Sarajevop I attended Music Academy in Zagreb, for a year with Darko Petrinjak. In 1991 war broke out In former Yugoslavia, and I left the country and ended up in Netherlands, where I studied at Rotterdam's Conservatory. Guitar teacher there was Dick Hogeeven, and as I mentioned earlier I spent considerable time learning from Eugenia's flute teacher, Jo Hagen.
It’s very important to have good teachers from a very early age.
Who was your flute teacher, Eugenia?
EM: It wouldn’t be fair if I mentioned only one. The biggest influences in my flute playing have been, Jaime Martín, who lives in London and plays in one of the best orchestras there, The Academy of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields. I met him just before I went to the Netherlands. He himself studied in Holland, and is the person who encouraged me to go and study abroad.
There I met my professor, Jo Hagen, the principal flutist of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Although he’s not very well known, he’s a fantastic musician, very very good. There I met a great pianist, Jan Gruithuizen. I also had lessons with a Belgian flutist called Els Van Zunder. She’s also very good and helped me a lot. Just to mention somebody else from England: Kate Hill plays in the English Chamber Orchestra, a wonderful person and a wonderful flutist. She also gave me a lot of encouragement to study abroad.
And after that?
DA: After we finished our studies, for a long time we kind of helped each other. Over the next seven or eight years I went to about 35 competitions, and Eugenia accompanied me to many of them, to encourage me, to criticise me — in a very constructive way. When I complained about my nails, she said ‘I don’t care, just get it out!’ — you know.
You won a lot of competitions. I hope you gave her some of the prize money.
DA: I married her!
How many competitions did you win?
DA: Ten, I would say....
EM: ...Seven second prizes, six or seven third prizes. Denis has just published a book called ‘On Competitions’ (Mel Bay). And I must say, he is very humble. He didn’t mention any competition that he won before he was 19. He did win competitions in Italy and Greece, but they were student competitions and he doesn’t mention them. He only mentions big international competitions; he doesn’t want to mention the others. He is very humble in that sense.
EM: I did actually do one, in 1994. From an experience point of view, it went very well. I didn’t win it. I did other competitions with Denis. We won a chamber music competition, in Rotterdam. And that’s it. I really didn’t focus on competitions.
DA: A competition has its benefits, but it’s not absolutely vital. For example, I started the process of learning the guitar when I was six years old. In Yugoslavia, which included competitions for young pupils and students, I felt there was always a goal for which to practise and to be excited about.
From very early on we had a music education system in former Yugoslavia that would allow us to compete, to compare, whatever. So we had those kinds of federal competitions. I started to go to them when I was ten or eleven. As a kid you look at those things quite differently then when you go to an international competition at the age of 19.
Eugenia and I have a quite different past in our development as musicians. She started learning the flute when she was 15 years old. But I always say that she has that spirit that I will never possess. I learn from her in different ways. So, you make it, with competitions or without them; it’s just your spirit, your determination, whether you want to do it.
There are so many guitar competitions. Would you agree the best thing they do is to give you opportunities to play?
EM: Some of them do. Others just offer you the cash prize — and you forget about that.
But you meet people, you hear them play...
DA: ...And they hear you.
EM: But a competition by itself —If you don’t work afterwards, Nothing! You know, because If you don’t keep on fighting, working hard with your instrument, increasing your repertoire. No matter how many competitions you have won, that’s not going to make your career.
How many competitions are there? How many winners? Where are those winners?
DA: Anything you want to do in terms of your career — if you want to get some concerts, you are competing against other people who want to get a concert. It’s the normal thing if you want to get a job: you are competing against others. Everything is competition! But a music competition is a very particular position, where you get very, very nervous. Some people are better than others in controlling the situation. It’s a kind of mental part, it doesn’t mean that they are better musicians.
EM: Going back to our duo, to what we do. I think one of the things that is going to help us — and is helping us — to be successful in what we are doing, is that we are together and that we work as intensely as we do. Very often people who play very well get together just for a few concerts, the result can never be the same as it is for people who are constantly working together. People that have been working together for many years come to know each other so well that there is something special about their music making. When we started taking the duo seriously, we heard many people discouraging us— because many people didn’t believe the flute and guitar could have a career as a chamber music group. But if you love and believe what you do, you find the way. Like finding out that there is so much interesting repertoire there to be discovered, and so many beautiful sounds to be heard. We enjoy playing together, and that is the point, you know. To enjoy what you do.
CC: Do you play apart sometimes, solo or in ensemble?
EM: Yes. I play with piano sometimes. I have my repertoire with pianists. In fact, my first solo CD with piano is coming out very soon. And Denis plays solo recitals, and with orchestra as well. We also perform with a trio, flute, guitar and viola.
CC: This is music you play from choice, not necessity?
EM: Exactly. I chose to play music because I love it. I can’t live without it. There is no question.
DA: You know Fabio Zanon, of course? He came to visit us some years ago; we worked together at a festival in Florida, and he came to stay in Chicago for a few days. It’s sometimes very nice to spend time with your colleagues away from the festival. And he said, ‘You know, you don’t choose music; music chooses you’. It’s really like that. He put it very nicely. You make some conscious decisions, but what is pushing you, what gives you his kind of drive? Is it something beyond reason?
EM: Of course, when you have more concerts you fulfill many dreams. Being better known means more concerts — this is a dream we have as students, to go around the world and play concerts.
CC: In many ways you are more fortunate than orchestral musicians.
EM: I think I am. I'm happy with what I do now.
DA: Eugenia had some of her colleagues, some of her friends who got orchestral jobs, and recently they were saying "I’m quite fed up with the job, where you come and you rehearse and you do what you are told".
CC: There are some personalities who like the security.
EM: We don’t have that security, but there is one thing that we do have. I believe more and more in what I do. This also brings me confidence.
DA: I don’t believe any more in security.
EM: What is security? Even the orchestra doesn’t have it.
DA: The orchestra could go bankrupt.
EM: There are many good things about playing in an orchestra: you learn a lot, you meet a lot of great musicians, but it’s just not for everybody.
CC: Do you go to many festivals?
DA: Not that many, but it’s becoming more and more.
EM: We did a tour in Taiwan, eight concerts in two weeks. We were hired by a music agency, nothing to do with the guitar. It’s not that I have anything against the guitar world, but we are trying to do more in the chamber music world. We are being invited in chamber music series, and this is what we really like to do. To have a general audience. We like to be appreciated also because we are doing something new. Many people consider this combination to be background music for a wedding, and they are very surprised when they listen to us.
I should mention that in our first recording, all the composers whose music we played — none of them are guitarists. Why would these people, like Toru Takemitsu or Edisson Denissov very successful composers, write music for flute and guitar?they like It like many others and believe it’s possible, it’s a nice combination. But who is playing their music? I think there is only one recording of the Sonata by Denisov, the one we did.
DA: I think music is written for people to enjoy. I don’t think the music is there for a small group of professionals to appreciate and therefore to criticise or to look at from a very high standard because they understand it, because they are professionals. I think it’s more for the general audience to enjoy. As I think Picasso said, "art takes up the dust from the soul". It’s amazing sometimes, when you play for people, that the greatest compliment you get is from a general audience. You are of course very happy and very satisfied when an esteemed colleague comes to you and congratulates you, pays tribute and so on, but the person who is not a musician comes and tells you — I remember one moment when I was playing in my home town three or four years ago, after the war and all that, it was still fresh in the people’s memories and hearts. And all this came after the concert when they said, ‘You know, for an hour and a half we forgot where we were. We forgot about everything, and we were somewhere else.’
That was the biggest compliment I ever had. And I think that’s important. That’s why Eugenia says our goal is, not to be in any way condescending towards the guitar world. I come from there, but it’s still a small world. In any profession, if you stay within that profession, it’s a small world. But if you manage to play for a general audience, regardless of the origin of the guitar or any other instrument, that’s the beauty of it: that’s who we should be playing for. I think that’s how music survives. Especially in these days, because of the younger generation, because of the media, the TV, the internet, the computers — you know, people are bombarded with the multi-media events, things that involve all the senses. I’m just waiting for the tactile sense to start getting involved, with Virtual Reality — then maybe smell, who knows?
Music is just one very subtle way of reaching people. We have to attract the younger audience — but how, I don’t know. Sometimes that happens, as it did recently in Taiwan, I would say that 80 per cent of those people were students, teenagers: very young. I was so happy to see that kind of audience at the concerts, getting excited about our music.