Jelena Popržan's journey to music without borders

Jelena Popržan is a viola player. Born in Serbia, she studied in Austria, where she now lives, and this year she will be a guest at the Brno Music Marathon Festival. On Sunday, 10 August, she will perform in the courtyard of the House of the Lords of Kunštát as part of the Balkan Soirée. We are talking to Jelena Popržan about her path to music, the challenges and joys of playing the viola, the historical perspective of this instrument and the various groups and projects she is involved in.

You perform solo and in various groups. Can you tell us something about your path to a professional music career?

I remember loving the pop stars of the 80s when I was little – like all the other kids, I suppose. I started imitating them, holding ‘concerts’ at home and singing. I supposedly woke up one day and announced that I would like to play the violin. I don't remember this, but that's what my mother says. Perhaps it was because of Stefan Milenković, the child violin prodigy from Belgrade in what was then Yugoslavia, who was very popular at that time. So I started playing the violin. They didn't accept me at first, saying I didn't have enough talent. Yet a year later, they reproached my mother for not bringing me to them earlier. And that’s how it all began. I started learning the violin at the age of nine, and after I finished primary music school my teacher suggested I switch to the viola. The reason? It was such a cliché – he said that I was talented, but very lazy and that I didn’t practice, but that it might be enough for the viola… He was, of course, joking. But I thought it could be interesting. And that I would go back to the violin if I didn’t like it. Only later did I find out that my violin teacher was actually originally a violist and that no one was studying the viola at our school. He had concocted this plan to draw me to this instrument. So I gradually went through the whole academic process - through elementary, secondary school and the academy in Belgrade, until I ended up in Austria. I studied in Graz or more precisely in the village of Oberschützen, where the relevant department of the Styrian Academy is located. I lived in this small village for two years, but then fled to Vienna. Ever since I was a child, I had wanted to do everything my own way. Even when I was studying, I had my own musical projects with my classmates. For example, I had the Catch-Pop String-Strong duo with cellist Rina Kaçinari. We then formed the Sormeh trio with two Persian musicians, Mona Matbou Riahi on clarinet and singer Goldnar Shahyar. I still have the Madame Baheux group with Ljubinka Jokić from Bosnia on the guitar, Maria Petrova from Bulgaria on the drums, and the only real Austrian in this Viennese groiup, Lina Neuner, on the double bass. With this group, which still operates, we are gradually shifting from a feminist to a post-feminist stage, I would say. I think that when we retire one day, this group will still exist and we will continue playing a few concerts a year. I'm really looking forward to it.

These projects differ in their cast. Did they also play different repertoires?

With all these projects, I played music that I liked in my childhood, my youth, or even later. I have always tried to combine everything I had in my head, but I don't think it was anything extraordinary. Each of us tries to combine different things that we like, and that's the only way we manage to come up with something new in art. And because today information flows like never before, this way of creating is absolutely natural. So I'm not going to say that I'm breaking down boundaries in music or anything like that. That's one big cliché. During the creation process, we all work with the information we have available.

As you have already indicated, playing the viola is associated with a number of clichés and jokes. Yet do you think the viola is more demanding than the violin in some way?

I can't quite say. The viola is larger than the violin and therefore heavier. That's the first, physical difference that might make it more challenging to play. You need more strength in your hands. The technique of playing is very similar for both instruments, but when playing the viola, you need to apply more pressure. That may make it more challenging. You also feel differently when you play. I am not very familiar with the clichés associated with playing the viola, but I assume they originate from literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. At that time, the viola only played a supporting role. So even though the viola player had good technique, they could not apply it. And if you don't use what you know, you only get worse. Maybe that's where it originated. Or it was that members of one family played in a salon, and while the better ones could play the violin, the worse ones were left with the viola as an accompanying instrument. Yet the instrument itself was not to blame. It was the fault of the contemporary literature and how the pieces were written and arranged. When solo playing spread in the 19th century, it initially concerned instruments like the piano, cello and violin. Not much sheet music was published for the viola. This only changed in the 20th century. But other than that, I don't know what else to add.

How did you get into solo concerts?

I originally always played with other colleagues. I actually started performing solo by accident. Once I was supposed to play in a duo, but my colleague got sick. Yet because I was already preparing for the concert - it was in Zagreb - the organisers asked me to try and do something. Because everything was already prepared and the audience was practically entering the hall. I thought I could play for about half an hour by myself. But in the end, I performed a concert lasting more than an hour, and that was my very first solo experience. The second time was for a similar reason, when my bandmate cancelled the concert and I had to play alone again. It was an exciting adventure. Around that time, I was also thinking about the topic for my master's studies. I wanted to develop the looping technique and was also interested in variations of the old La Folia musical theme that I knew from my days at music grammar school. There I played variations on Arcangelo Corelli's works. In the end I decided to combine these two ideas - to work with a looper and incorporate variations of the La Folia cycle. From these ideas my regular solo performances were born, and then I started composing new pieces for myself. That was the beginning of my current solo programme. I've been performing solo for seven years now and this concept of mine is gradually developing. For example, I am working on communication with the audience and stage presentation. Even though I play more or less the same songs, it's a little different every time. Yes, I could play in an orchestra or a chamber ensemble, and I even tried doing so during my studies, but I was never successful in auditioning for one of those ensembles. The last time I applied, I wasn't even invited. I thought to myself that not even being invited to audition is not normal. The voices in my head even then began to say: Jelena, it’s a sign that you should not try any more but should go your own way. - And so I stopped thinking about a career in an orchestra. - Otherwise, I have always loved chamber music and my latest project - Jelena Popržan Quartet - is actually related to this. It was perhaps conscious, perhaps subconscious, but I created a beautiful chamber ensemble with my colleagues that, even though it does not play classical music, is still influenced by my musical education. My bandmates are jazz musicians. There's a double bass and cello. I play the viola and sing, while the fourth player alternates between clarinet and saxophone. Lina Neuner plays the double bass, Clemens Sainitzer the cello and Christoph Pepe Auer the clarinet and saxophone.

On the Jelena Popržan Quartet album you sing, among other things, poems by Tamar Radzyner put to music. Who was she?

Tamar Radzyner was a Polish Jewish writer who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Vienna in the late 1950s because of the strong wave of antisemitism. It was then that she abandoned her activism and began composing poems in German, a new language for her. She later wrote in her biography that thanks to writing these texts, she did not need to seek psychiatric help. She found a true asylum in verse written in German. When I read these poems, I was moved and confused at the same time. She wrote about topics related to her life, which were not only personal matters but also politics and the society she was part of. She criticised the bourgeois society in Vienna after the Second World War. She also wrote about the Holocaust, of course, but in addition to that she wrote humorous poems. All of this mixed and overlapped in her work. Her verses are extremely powerful. I immediately felt like setting them to music when I read them, also because she often wrote them in regular verse, which has its own rhythm and music is directly encoded in it. In the end, though, it was difficult not to let the music overwhelm the power of the words. I wanted the verses to remain quiet yet still be heard, and in the first place. The music should come second, such was my respect for the verses. So I composed five songs that form part of my programme with the quartet. Besides these, we also play my own instrumental compositions. This is the very first project in which I play only my own compositions. Before that, I always did cover versions or my own interpretations of folk music, for example from England, Ireland, Bulgaria and France.

In your solo concerts you play not only the viola, but also various objects, such as glasses. Are you substituting sounds that cannot be played on the viola?

I wouldn't say I'm replacing a missing sound. I just find it interesting and nice. I like discovering new instruments and new sounds. I actually feel much freer when I play an instrument that is not entirely my own. I have been playing the viola and violin for more than 30 years. After such a long time, everything is automatic, and you become a prisoner of your own technique and your instrument. Then, when you come into contact with another instrument, you are free to go in any direction. And it is this freedom that is important to me. It is therefore easier for me to improvise on another instrument than on my own. It's like when I have a text in the theatre that immediately inspires me in a way that I can't describe in words. It's a very direct and intuitive connection to the material I'm working with. This is why in the future I would like to work more with other instruments, possibly with objects I make myself, or even with garbage. But we'll see when that happens.