LDV111-2

‘We play the way we are.’ Those few words have rarely sounded so true as in the case of Gary Hoffman. In front of audiences or of his students at the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Music Chapel and on the most prestigious American campuses, he does not come to deliver a message. He stands before us, not to please us. He plays out of necessity, because music and life are one. It seems so simple in a world awash with images, slogans and attitudes. Like any poet of the concert platform, Gary Hoffman took responsibility for his choices early on. Thanks to his parents, both professional musicians, and later to his teachers, Karl Fruh in Chicago and, even more vital, János Starker, he is a stranger to compromise. Winning the Premier Grand Prix of the Rostropovich Competition in Paris in 1986 opened doors for him. For all that, he has never made any concessions in his artistic decisions. He plays to be himself. The rules impose themselves naturally: to master the instrument’s technique and enter step by step into the universe of a work. But to what end? If it is to seek perfection, Gary Hoffman is happy to miss his turn . . . But if his playing awakens the beauty of a phrase and he can share its light with others, the artist is fulfilled. In his eyes, the cult of efficiency and volume never takes precedence over the expression of beauty, which has nurtured him since his youth, when he listened to the greatest musicians and discovered cinema and painting, his other passions. To build a philosophy of life through art: is there any nobler ambition? 40 BEETHOVEN ∙ COMPLETE SONATAS AND VARIATIONS FOR CELLO AND PIANO