We caught up with Basil Alter to find out more about him…
What is your main occupation at the moment?
I am currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music, so a student!
What made you choose to play your instrument and how old were you when you started?
My mother is a violinist and she started my sister and I when we were three. I didn’t consistently play all that time – I was interested in many things as a child and my parents never pushed me into violin, but no matter what I would do I would always end up back with the violin. I think I found it the most rewarding out of all the instruments and other music things I was doing, even though it was also the most challenging.
What made you choose the concerto that your will be playing?
The Korngold is a really brilliant piece that captures a specific moment in history. For those unfamiliar, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austrian composer that sought refuge in the late 1930s in America. He found success writing film music, and some say his unique style essentially created the genre of Hollywood cinematic composition as we know it today. The Violin Concerto incorporates themes from many of his classic film scores, titles which you may recognise: Juarez, Anthony Adverse, and The Prince and the Pauper, to name a few. The piece was dedicated to Alma Mahler (Korngold studied with Gustav Mahler as a child) and was premiered by Jascha Heifetz and the St Louis Symphony in 1947.
To me, the concerto says so much about the human experience – the original themes and motifs from the music that Korngold wrote for the movies were crafted to enhance specific storylines, tropes, and the emotions that came with those ideas. Many of these emotions resonate with me these days, and so in that way, the piece allows me a special opportunity to express myself truly and fully. I do this best with violin in-hand anyway, but in every piece it could be said the interpreter’s job is to express the composer’s intentions – with Korngold’s concerto, it is just lucky that he and I want to say the same things.
What do you feel you would gain from the experience of winning this competition and playing your concerto with ERSO and Chris Stark?
I’m very grateful to have made it to the finals! I would be so honoured to play with the ERSO because it would be my first time performing the Korngold with an orchestra, and the opportunity to work in-depth on the piece with Chris Stark would be invaluable.
ERSO 