Concertmaster turns the page

요즈음은 직장을 자주 옮기고 다른 직업을 가지는 것을 쉽게 생각합니다. 하지만 한 분야에서 꾸준히 일한 가치를 결코 가볍게 생각할 수는 없겠지요. 평생을 일해도 후회함이 없는 일을 찾을 수 있다면 그보다 더 복된 일도 없을 것입니다. 

바이올린 연주자 후지꼬씨의 이야기가 눈길을 끕니다. 자신의 분야에서 30년 가까이 일한 것은 본 받을만 하지요. 나이가 들었어도 일을 포기하지 아니하고 새로운 도전을 시작하는 모습을 통하여 배웁니다. 

어린 소녀시절 발레를 하고 싶어 바이올린을 그만두겠다고 하였을 때 그녀의 아버지가 이렇게 충고했다고 하지요. "한 가지 일도 제대로 끝내지 못하는 사람이 어떻게 다른 일을 잘 할 수 있다고 생각하는가?" 라고 말입니다.

작은 일이라도 성공의 경험을 가질 때 자신감이 생기며 다른 일에도 성공할 가능성이 높다는 충고는 오늘 날에도 그대로 적용되는 이야기가 아닐까 싶습니다.

<Concertmaster turns the page>

Sunday's final curtain on the National Ballet of Canada's mainstage season marks the end of a long run for the dance orchestra's concertmaster, 64-year-old Fujiko Imajishi.

The Tokyo-born violinist, who has held the top instrumental job for 29 years, is not leaving because of any need to stop making music. This is something she is doing for love.

On a concert tour in Germany, Imajishi met the piccolo player of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. The two began an email friendship that blossomed into something more. Five years later, they are married – and hopping between their respective residences in Canada and Norway.

The violinist has no intention of giving up her beautiful home, nestled on a quiet East York cul-de-sac. Nor is she about to quit her other long-time Toronto gigs as concertmaster of the Esprit Orchestra and collaborator with flutist Robert Aitken's New Music Concerts.

But former Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Jukka-Pekka Saraste is now the conductor in charge of the Oslo group, presenting a convenient professional connection.

"We are familiar to each other," says Imajishi, who expects to fill vacant violin chairs as often as she can in Norway. "This is not a retirement," she says of leaving the National Ballet. "It is me turning a new page in my life."

She smiles. "I've always wanted to be in a European orchestra, so here I am."

As the violinist tells her history, which starts with childhood violin lessons in Tokyo, it quickly becomes apparent that Imajishi is a charmed soul. She has seen so many of her wishes and dreams come true – all in ways she couldn't have expected.

After graduating from Tokyo's famed Toho Gakuen School of Music – whose most famous graduate is conductor Seiji Ozawa, another one-time Toronto Symphony music director – Imajishi wanted further studies with violinist Lorand Fenyves in Switzerland, but could not afford it.

Ending up at the University of Western ontario in the mid-1960s, she discovered that Fenyves had taken up a teaching post at the University of Toronto.

She thought it more than a coincidence. She recalls the day she tagged along with friends on a drive to Toronto and asked to be dropped off at the Faculty of Music. "I knocked on his door, he opened it and said, `Yes?' and I said `I want to study with you.'" The musician laughs now at her effrontery.

But it worked. They had made a connection, strengthened by her recent win at a Montreal Symphony Orchestra competition for young musicians. Not only did she get her wish, studying with Fenyves cemented the young musician's connection with Toronto.

In a similarly fateful vein, Imajishi recalls how, as a little girl, she would duck out of practising violin by sneaking off to the ballet school down the street.

one day, I came home and asked my father if I could start ballet," she recalls. Her father sternly said no, insisting she focus on one thing. "So I thought maybe I can quit violin and do ballet. When you're little, that's how you think."

Her father's response: "If you can't accomplish one thing, how can I trust you to do other things?"

The concertmaster says, "I realized there was no way out, that I'd have to keep doing what I was doing. It's such a coincidence that I ended up playing violin for a ballet company."

Another stroke of luck connected Imajishi with her violin, a late-18th century gem by the last big-name craftsman from Cremona, Italy, Lorenzo Storioni. on the lookout for an old-master instrument, she had fallen in love with it in Florida, but couldn't afford it. Several months later, the violin showed up in Toronto "at a lower price; the owner really wanted to sell it," says Imajishi.

Her favourite ballet score is Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet, a John Cranko-created staple of the National Ballet's repertoire. "When I hear that music, I always say, `That's why I'm here,'" she exclaims.

Shakespeare's immortal story is another that hangs on the fickle twists of fate. Except that it doesn't have Imajishi's happy outcomes.

(Source : TORONTO STAR Thursday Jun 11, 2009 page E4 by JOHN TERAUDS who is classical music critic)