MUSIC : Music’s Large Issues Are His Theme

Guitarist Eliot Fisk, who will play in Irvine today, has some critical opinions about festivals and about players’ educations.

Andres Segovia once described protege Eliot Fisk as “one of the most brilliant, intelligent and gifted musical artists of our time.” But when talking about music himself, Fisk--who plays in recital with flutist Paula Robison today at the Irvine Barclay Theatre--prefers to talk about larger issues rather than technical details such as “where I put my finger on the string to produce a tone.”

Take what he considers the co-opting of music festivals by the moneyed elite. Or the dismal professional prospects facing young artists today. Or the narrow musical training young artists receive.

Fisk voiced views on all of those during a recent phone interview from Sobernheim, Germany, where he was participating in a two-week festival very unlike the “very chichi festivals” he despises.

“Festivals very often get taken over by the snobs,” Fisk said, “and then classical music is back in its usual ghetto situation of being associated with elitism and people with a lot of money and . . . undemocratic values I don’t believe in or support and don’t want to have anything to do with . . . .

“Basically, this is very low-keyed and really is intergrated into the community,” he said about the festival. “So when people come to the concerts, there’s a very nice familiarity, a community spirit, which I think music is, in part, intended to do--to draw people together who otherwise might not come together.”

He conceded that that is how music festivals start. “Then the snobs take over,” he said. “You see Porsches and Mercedeses in the parking lot, people in evening dress, like (in) Salzburg, where I’m living.”

Fisk, now 37, found his way to Salzburg, where he teaches guitar at the Mozarteum, in 1989 after leaving Cologne, Germany, where he taught guitar at the Musikhochschule since 1982.

Salzburg is a dramatic contrast from Lansdown, Penn., where Fisk was born. He was brought up “in the Quaker tradition, although I’m not a practicing Quaker,” he said. But enough of the faith apparently survives for him to express “one basic tenet” of it--”There’s that of God in every man or woman or child.

“If you believe that,” he said, “you are probably interested in getting in touch with that divine spark, spirit, call it what you want. Music is a fast way to do that--not just fast, but a very satisfying, eloquent way to do it. I like to see music serving this function of bringing people together and bringing elevated, sublime and noble thoughts into everyday life.”

Noble thoughts, indeed. But although his own career has blossomed--he has made 14 recordings, taught at Yale and Aspen as well as in Germany, and has premiered works composed for him as well as his own transcriptions--he is not optimistic about the prospects for young musicians today.

“The whole underlying foundation--support system--of classical music is in a bad way and desperately needs attention, because what’s happened (is) basically the number of artists has mushroomed but the amount of work has remained the same,” he said.

“I tell my students they have to do missionary work--winning of new audiences--which should have followed from this explosion, but which hasn’t happened. . . .

“Something is wrong with the education--the moral education--of artists,” he said. “Too many of them have stars in their eyes. They see themselves being artists playing for packed houses, collecting accolades. But in fact . . . young people, when they’re done studying, have huge debts and no work. Zero. A lot of them. I had students at Yale--one is in medical school now, one went into business. They had to; they had no choice. No work. Nothing. I had to sit there helpless and say: ‘I can’t blame you . . . . I can’t tell you where to go to find an audience or even where to find a teaching job . . .

“I tell them: ‘If there’s any other way you can stand to make a living, do it. Don’t ever stop playing guitar; you’ll miss it, but if there is any other way you’ll make money, do it. This is such a tough business.”

It is this business preparation that he finds sadly lacking in the education of musicians. But beyond that, he believes that “musical education is run in the wrong way.

“There should be much more cross-fertilization between musicians. Guitarists should teach pianists, pianists should teach violinists, and so on all the way around. There’s so much more prodding that way. People on other instruments force you to outdo yourself. They have no pity for the shortcomings or limitations of your instrument.”

One such musician who prodded him is Robison, with whom he formed a duo in 1982. Fisk readily acknowledges Robison as “one of my great teachers” because “the collaboration with Paula has pushed me to go further and further and not be afraid to let go,” he said. “She demands the utmost of the instrument.”

Still, the two encounter limited repertory and to fill an evening-long program they usually must arrange other works or “chase composers around to write for us.

“But I think that’s part of the fun,” Fisk said, “creating repertory for this combination, which is attractive but which hasn’t attracted too many of the great composers.”

Even so, does he ever regret choosing the guitar?

“Sometimes I regret becoming a musician,” he said, “not because it’s a hard life, which it is. Last week I worked on a change of fingering for an extended passage. It took two hours. I worked my butt off.

“But let’s say if I were a really great scientist and in those two hours I had been able to figure out a cure for AIDS . . . or maybe how to develop a new strain of wheat that required little water. . . . That would be much more important than what I do.”

* The Orange County Philharmonic Society presents guitarist Eliot Fisk and flutist Paula Robison in works by Haydn, Villa-Lobos, Mauro Giuliani and other composers today at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $10 to $20. Information: (714) 553-2422.