LDV111-2

41 GARY HOFFMAN, DAVID SELIG He plays to transmit absolute respect for the score, but also the need to question tradition. To admire is not to be enslaved. His recordings for La Dolce Volta bear witness to this. To walk onto the platform, to observe the microphone that picks up the soundwaves, is to have already thought, to have forbidden oneself no reflection, even if it should run counter to current fashion. To young musicians, he passes on an appetite for doubt, curiosity and risk, from the standard repertoire to new music. Why do we find so many artists of the past so appealing, when we now readily acknowledge the imperfections in their playing? How could he not already sing in his mind’s ear, even before placing his bow on the strings of the Nicolò Amati cello of 1662 which accompanies him everywhere and which once belonged to Leonard Rose? He plays for an ideal, ever since his debut at London’s Wigmore Hall at the age of fifteen: to serve the composer, most assuredly, with a proposal, his proposal. It is impossible, in that case, to lie to oneself under the gaze of a Pablo Casals or an Artur Rubinstein. Gary Hoffman recalls one of the most moving moments of his life, when he saw Rubinstein walk across the platform to the keyboard. The simple movement of his body in space became the essence of his existence, the prelude to the ineffable. It is silence, that refuge between the notes which produces music. Music is sufficient unto itself: it soothes the sorrows of life. Gary Hoffman makes no distinction between the word and the vibration of the string . . . All is delicious confusion and wonderful unpredictability. Like life.