Interview with Mihael Paar - clarinetist, composer & publicist

IN THE SPIRIT OF HOMO UNIVERSALIS
Hosted by Robert Škiljan, editor-in-chief of the SSN Herald
July 16th 2005 Edition (No. 112, 5th Season)
 
SSN Herald: How do you as a student and artist live in Salzburg, a town known for Mozart and intensive cultural life?
M.Paar: I have been living in Salzburg for almost three years now, and am almost starting to feel at home. Austria is a member of EU and a good example of advanced democracy, they have high standard of living, bureaucracy is quick and efficacious, order and high level of organization is seen in all institutions.
Mozarteum itself is one of the best Austrian products, figures like 60% of foreign students and annual budget of 30 million Euros speak in favour of this. Even though Salzburg is relatively a small town, cultural events are really numerous and what is even more important they are exceptionally high-quality events. This will particularly become prominent next year when Salzburg is preparing a great celebration in honour of 250th Mozart's birth anniversary. All the year around the largest part of his 600 works will be preformed. All these figures tell enough about the life of artists in this town.
My beginnings as a Salzburg student were not pleasant at all; new environment turned round my life completely. First of all there was a different system of education, multicultural surrounding, language and finances. But, with time I made friends, mastered the language and was awarded a scholarship by the Zagreb County.
I am planning to win my master's degree next summer and till then I'll try to gain as much as I can from many contents that Mozarteum offers.
 
AMADEUS-TOURISM
SSN Herald: You mentioned finances. Of so much offered, what can you afford yourself?
M.Paar: Because of Austrian high standard of living and because of the high prices that go with it, I have no other choice but to rationalize my expenses to the maximum. If I don't have control over it, the expenses become unbearable, although the control itself is hard enough. Financial support, besides the scholarship comes from my parents and from a member of my extended family. Occasionally there is also an artistic fee. Salzburg itself is probably one of the most expensive towns in Austria, for everything is about Amadeus-tourism®, as I like to call it. But low-budget student population eventually finds the places that guarantee more or less reasonable prices.
SSN Herald: How does organization of concerts function? Are there auditions, who engages you and how is it done?
M.Paar: This is a very delicate issue and I am glad that you asked me about it. Schooling at Mozarteum is not a guarantee of gaining a recognition nor is it a way to get an engagement. In fact, there is no music-teaching institution that is obliged to take care about these matters. You are left to yourself, even if you are top of the class. This simply isn't among the duties of the faculty as such.
Mozarteum provides top-level education, which means high-grade personnel, perfect working conditions and this is where its duties end. Perhaps the only school in the world that takes care about its students careers is famous Julliard School of Music in New York. But Julliard is an elite institution in every aspect. As a result of selection implemented there, only 8% of candidates successfully pass the entrance exam, which is the figure that speaks for itself. It is therefore beyond all question, that it is the quality of an individual verified by concrete results, which decides upon getting an engagement. By concrete results I mean in the first place awards won at major international competitions which are then strong references for young rising musicians. The awards which laureates get are often concert or discography offers which is of course the best way of awarding them and in the end a true meaning of competitions. Every international competition carries weight, it is therefore the best way of proving one's quality and being recognized as such.
SSN Herald: Why would you like to go to America after your Master's degree at Mozarteum?
M.Paar: I'd like to go to America, not because of America itself, although it attracts me in many ways. The clarinet virtuoso, Charles Neidich who lives and works in New York is the main reason for my plans to go there. Mr. Neidich is a great musician and a virtuoso second to none, He is well known as a master of double and triple tonguing as well as circular breathing, the techniques that have been in the focus of my closest interest for the last two years. His music views are very much like mine and it is known that for a good interaction between a professor and student this is a very important feature.
I must, however, point out that I have an excellent collaboration with my present mentor, professor Alois Brandhofer, 1986-1992 solo-clarinetist of the Berlin Philharmonic. He has almost reformed my way of playing as well as my perception of clarinet and music in general thus opening new perspectives which I had not even been aware of.
I am 25 now and I would like to complete my education including all the plans I mentioned by the time I am 27 or 28. Although, my first wish is Mr. Neidich, it could just as well be some of the renowned European clarinetists. Sabine Meyer (Lübeck) and Wenzel Fuchs (Berlin) would also be among the best choices. But, it needs to be said that it is not easy to enter the classes of these professors. Also there are some other features that play significant role in the final choice. They are finances, distance and specifics of the new environment.
 
FORMUS FORMAE
SSN Herald: You play classical music mostly. Can you see yourself somewhere in the world of jazz, considering your plans to go to the USA?
M.Paar: I was hoping you would ask me something about pop or rock which would perhaps be more attractive to me than jazz, although there are many of those who wouldn't expect this from a classical musician. Jazz is a very special world, a world for itself. To understand it, I recommend the idea by Stravinsky and his interpretation of the genre as a whole. Although Stravinsky thought highly of jazz, the basic idea itself never effected his work, he would only take the elements of it in contours stylizing them into the works of his own music language.
Jazz is not a composed music, it is music in emerging (formus formae), its basics is improvisation. I think that jazz as such is limited in the sense of musical forms but this is not something that is necessarily less good; if you take pop music for instance you see that it is also limited by its form, because it is defined to 3 minutes and to a strophe form with refrain. That is why it seems that sometimes every song sounds the same.
In the clarinet literature there is stylized jazz and so-called symphonic (which is also stylized) jazz. In my repertoire there are also a few works of these kinds which I cope with much better than with original genre.
Jazz is of course very interesting to me, but I am quite aware that it is not my world. As classical trained musician I think that I have a surplus of discipline and a lack of freedom for this specific genre.
SSN Herald: You mentioned pop rock. You can not be a performer there because clarinet is not an instrument of a standard pop or rock group?
M.Paar: Of course, but when it goes for pop-rock, I act as a musician and listener, and not as a clarinetist. I have been listening to the Beatles, Beach Boys, Bee Gees and Queen for many years now, and it is always with the same passion. It inspires me over and over again, but unfortunately this kind of music does not always get due credit from the sphere of classical musicians.
Having no ambitions to explain this, I shall only suggest that it is impossible to ignore the quality of the musical being, no matter what genre it comes from.
 
HOMO UNIVERSALIS
SSN Herald: Yet, when you are not a clarinetist, you are a composer?
M.Paar: Yes, because music composition meets my other inclination which I as a reproductive musician am not able to respond to adequately. I discovered the world of finding out my own music quite early, and even though I feel the lack of technique, theory and literature which I would have gained by formally studying composition, I know that deep inside me there is a nucleus of a music explorer – composer.
Glasnik SSN: Besides the music, you are occupied with other subjects. What are your interests?
M.Paar: My interests are wide and numerous indeed, and the ones I decide to commit, I commit purely, without compromise and with all my being. The result of it is my aim towards virtuosity in the widest sense of the word, so every mediocrecy comes to me as burden.
Fortwith to music, journalism is my great passion. A gift to speech and to writte is so exciting that I simply enjoy a quality text, strong epistle or even only a syntagma. The coulmn I have been writing in the SSN Herald matched my authoring and intellectual appetites perfectly. Although I was not in a position to submit the column for every release, I believe I still acomplished a related and rounded seria of texts the topics of which were modern man and mankind issues as a whole.
I am persistent, comprehensive in all respects, and maybe this is just an illusion but I assume that I touch to the Being when I penetrate or get through to the core of the matter I am being occupied with. This is what fulfils me, giving me balance and motivation, as well as content and happiness at the same time. I strongly believe that a human being as such should feel called upon to use all his resources as to finally develop his potentials into concrete and articulate skills.
SSN Herald: You are one of the few musicians who have their own, detailed, professional website. What did you want to achieve with this other than giving general information about yourself?
M.Paar: This could be connected with the previous question. The site itself was on the track of that same reflection, that is why it is done very meticulously with all relevant data about me as an interpret and author. I have been collecting materials for quite a time and it took me about a year to finish it, partly because of my perfection, partly because of numerous obligations that I have.
The aims of my personal site? When you choose to be a professional musician for your vocation, then you actually choose a vocation of a public worker which implies many specific actions. When we talk about global presentation, web is a medium second to none whereas a personal site is more than payable investment. The point about having a personal site is to make a virtual monograph, which will with all the help of advanced software one can get, insure strong impression and bring the visitor to the site more than once.
Web-design was done by the Pozoj Studio from Samobor and it is both attractive and functional. Only multimedia contents are still missing (in the meantime uploaded - subsequent remark), while all other materials – biography, repertoire, schedule, reviews, gallery and works are set up and ready to be viewed.
Whole site is bilingual, English version being made mostly by my mother, a professor of English and Russian. The project was held under patronage of Pozoj, Samobor Bank, Šoić d.o.o. and Hotel Livadić.
 
OFF-LINE SYNDROM
SSN Herald: How much time does it take you to maintain and update the site?
M.Paar: Since the site has actually just begun to function, I still haven't gained a clear picture of how much time its maintaining will take me, but the largest part of the work has been completed. Personal website is not a kind of portal type of site which needs to be updated on a daily basis. Presumably, I shall be more preoccupied by standard online activities, like e-mailing, surfing or searching, as well as working on the computer itself.
SSN Herald: How do you as part of online generation see the Internet and the changes that it brings? Is it a problem to you if for some reason you don't have access to the Internet?
M.Paar: In the last few days I've learnt again how inconvenient it can be without the Internet connection, even if it is for very short. Because of some problems with my modem, I wasn't able to connect to the Internet. The impossibility of being online made me feel restless. The term Off-line Syndrome® which I coined at the time, seemed to be quite suitable to describe the state I was in.
The Internet is a medium with wide implications for a man, that is why those who use it should have that use under control. Possibilities that Internet offers make our life easier, but we should be aware of the danger that lies in that ease and in the lack of active efforts. Web has become a service second to none, with neither limitations nor frontiers while electronic mail has become an ultimate form of communication. Not only is it interesting to take part in all this, but it is also interesting to observe the evolution of the whole process.
I can still remember my uncle, the academician Vladimir Paar, who was back in early 1990s visionary explaining the medium that would enable us to connect computers around the world into one, unique net - Internet. Although, this is understandable by itself today, it didn't look as simple as that at that time, and it is this impossibility to predict that gives us the right to expect new, the most varied surprises in the upcoming times.
SSN Herald: However, music is best felt live at the concert? There is no substitute for that?
M.Paar: This is absolutely correct. It will always be like that regarding music, perhaps only production will more or less move towards what Maksim Mrvica is doing today, for example.
 
DUBIOUS CROSSOVER
SSN Herald: What do you think about such attempts and about Maksim Mrvica in particular?
M.Paar: It is a par excellence example of how to use and draw classical music into the entertainment scene. As to music, it does not mean any progress, I could even say it is a step backwards. But it has its commercial and promotive value which finally is a definition of the entertainment scene. Such genre or rather such arrangement is called crossover, classical crossover.
Talking about Maksim Mrvica who is my very talented colleague from the Music Academy in Zagreb, I can say that his career has brilliantly taken off under the mentorship of Mr. Huljić, although he had been acknowledged as an exceptional musician earlier than that. But the important thing to point out is that all these attempts clearly speak about the approach to classical music and the interest for it today, because these musicians (Maksim Mrvica among them) understand that chances of real and complete recognition as well as earnings, are inadequate in the world of classical music. I myself am completely aware, that I  as a classical clarinetist even if I prove myself through international competitions and reknowned orchestras, will hardly ever gain on that and such attention of large audience. This of course is not the point of the issue but it is not an unimportant part of the whole mosaic either.