“This is a major, major piece of the repertoire. You don’t find better music, and as big a keystone of the violin repertoire as it is, it is also just as big a piece of the orchestral repertoire.” Just like he tackles the big repertoire, James Ehnes is tackling the big questions.

James Ehnes. Photo © Benjamin Ealovega

After a couple of false starts thanks to a spotty Internet connection, arguably the finest violinist of his generation (he gets my vote, for what that’s worth) is hunkered down in some cramped corner of a hotel lobby, FaceTiming me, while all the noise and hubbub of a busy tourist abode whirls around him. It’s not a setting that inspires deep and profound thought, but Ehnes is undiminished.

Of course, it helps that the topic of our interview is one Ludwig van Beethoven. On his upcoming Australian visit, James Ehnes will tackle Beethoven’s mighty Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Chief Conductor Simone Young, as well as performing three of Beethoven’s violin sonatas with his long-time recital partner, pianist Andrew Armstrong.

Ehnes is an extraordinarily versatile and thoughtful musician, and his repertoire spans the centuries, from Bach and Mozart to modern masters like John Adams. But for Ehnes, Beethoven is almost always the centre of the musical world.

“Beethoven is so incredibly central to the entire artform,” says Ehnes. “At times it is easy to feel like all the music before Beethoven led to Beethoven, and all the music after Beethoven was a consequence of Beethoven.”

“You can look at the music of Bach, and there were generations where people weren’t really paying much attention to it. But from the real apex of Beethoven’s career, through to the modern day, it has remained essential to the entire artform.”

“It would be a little bit unfair to the revolutionary genius of some composers to just say, ‘Oh, it’s all Beethoven’. Of course it isn’t. But it is remarkable to think how inescapable his legacy has been. And that’s not just in classical music – it’s really in all music. I think that it has managed to seep into areas of popular culture, where much of what we think of as ‘classical music’ has never taken hold. But you think of things like the beginning of the Fifth Symphony, or the first movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata – it’s just part of popular culture now.”

James Ehnes. Photo © Benjamin Ealovega

Despite Beethoven’s awesome impact and continued influence – or perhaps because of it – Ehnes took a long time to record these great works. Ehnes’s professional performing career has just ticked into its fourth decade, having begun when he toured Canada with Jeunesses Musicales Canada, an organisation dedicated to supporting young musicians, in 1992–1993 when he was only 16 years old. But recent years have seen an incredible concentration on Beethoven’s works in the recording studio: Ehnes recorded the concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Manze (“a Beethoven Concerto to stand among the very best,” wrote Gramophone), followed closely by the complete Violin Sonatas with Armstrong (“The freshness and spontaneity of these interpretations is unfaltering, as is the instantaneous rapport and subtle, crystal-clear tonal beauty of the pair’s playing” – Gramophone again) and then the late String Quartets, from the 10th onwards, with his own eponymous ensemble.

Of course, the Violin Concerto has been a staple of Ehnes’s concert repertoire for many years – Sydney audiences may remember his 2016 performances under Vladimir Ashkenazy, where the Sydney Morning Herald praised Ehnes’s “extraordinary beauty and immaculately smooth sound”. Asked whether his approach to the work has changed over the years, or when performing with different conductors, Ehnes presents a typically thoughtful and considered analogy.

“I know what I want to say with the piece,” he begins. “But it is sort of like knowing the beginning of the story, and knowing the end, and then depending on who you are with, and who your audience is, and the circumstances, and the times, the way you tell that story is always a little bit different.”

“I think musicians really are storytellers. And in order to be an effective storyteller you have to know what the story is, and there has to be some sort of agreement of how the story works, and what the overall shape of it is. But how it is told? Well, that is always going to be a little bit different. And you are going to feed off your collaborators, off the audience, off the venue, off the circumstance. And I think that, hopefully, every performance, or every set of performances one has, you just gain a little bit more insight into how to be an effective storyteller.”

“Every time one has the chance to play it, you should take something from that, and it adds to an accumulation of experience.”

I wonder how much of that storytelling changes depending on the conductor, particularly with a piece as significant as the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Conductors have very strong views about how it should be played, including lots of things that you may not necessarily agree with exactly.

“Well, you know, the thing that is really advantageous about getting a little older, a little more experienced, and a little more established in the music business, is that you end up playing most – if not all of the time – with the people that you connect with,” says Ehnes. “And it is not very often that I end up working with a conductor these days where I don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. I think a lot of conductors that I work with are people that become friends through collaborations, and we have both made the effort to work more together, so that is already showing the relationship is there.”

“And the Beethoven is an interesting piece, as well, in the way in which it works – on the one hand there needs to be a real commonality of purpose, but on the other hand the violin has an interesting role in that piece, I think. One of the things that can be problematic about the piece is that it can seem quite episodic, and one wants to avoid that. I think you want to have an interpretation that seems very cohesive. But there is actually room for the orchestra to present a solid point of view, and to have the soloist make reflections and commentary upon that.”

“That is really one of the great joys of getting to play the piece with great conductors. And I have worked with Simone Young on a couple of occasions, and really, really enjoyed it. I have enjoyed her musically and professionally, and also really enjoyed getting to know her socially, and her family. She is a wonderful artist and a wonderful person.”

James Ehnes. Photo © Benjamin Ealovega

It’s fascinating to hear Ehnes’s perspective from the stage – but what of the view from the stalls? What does Ehnes think makes this piece such a perennial audience favourite?

He pauses a moment.

“It has a particularly magical balance of the big picture and smelling the roses along the way,” says Ehnes. “It has so many absolutely beautiful moments within a piece where the overall superstructure, when played well, is so compelling that it can affect one’s sense of time.”

“I think a great performance of a Beethoven concerto doesn’t seem short, nor long – it just is what it is. And I feel like the proportions are so beautiful and are so natural. Beethoven always seemed to write these pieces that were enormous struggles to write, and that had these complicated debuts that often went very poorly, and yet the piece somehow seems perfect. You wouldn’t want to do without any of it.”

“And at the same time, it doesn’t leave you wanting for more. It seems so wonderfully complete. It is such a complete journey. It manages to be very noble without ever being bombastic. And it has these incredible moments of intimacy.”

“It’s funny – as I say that, it describes the things that the violin is best at. It is a remarkably well-conceived piece for its instrument. And when you think of the way it contrasts with some of Beethoven’s other works, I think it is very, very special, and there is nothing else in the repertoire that quite hits the same spots. It is unique, and it is irreplaceable.”

“And I think it is a very optimistic piece of music – it makes people feel good to hear it. Different pieces, of course, fill different roles, and this is a very uplifting, optimistic piece of music. I think people tend to leave the concert hall feeling pretty good about life, and that’s not a bad thing.”

James Ehnes performs Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor Simone Young on 9, 11 & 12 November, and Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas with pianist Andrew Armstrong on 20 November. Visit the Sydney Symphony Orchestra website for tickets and more information.

He also performs Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on 17 & 19 November, and with Andrew Armstrong at Melbourne Recital Centre on 14 & 16 November.