Prone to Violins: ‘Reformed child prodigy’ Cerovsek performs with LV Philharmonic

Thursday, Feb. 26, 2004 | 8:17 a.m.

It's noon on a Saturday in Bloomington, Ind. Violinist Corey Cerovsek is eating an apple while relaxing during a two-day break from a performance schedule that keeps him en route year-round.

Sounding refreshed and inspired, the former child prodigy who jokingly refers to himself as a "reformed child prodigy" talks openly about plans regarding his career and academic ambitions.

Similar to the 1839 Pressenda he plays, Cerovsek seems to have the world at his fingertips.

He graduated at age 12 from the University of Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music. By age 16 he received master's degrees in mathematics and music.

The rest of Cerovsek's teens were spent completing the work for his doctorate.

Now 31 and unsure how long he'll continue performing, Cerovsek promises he will be playing, well, "for a while."

"The more I talk about stopping playing, the less likely it becomes," the Canadian-born Cerovsek said with a laugh during a telephone interview from his Indiana home. "When I'm onstage playing, I'm thinking, 'This is the best job ever.'"

To be sure, fans might want to catch Cerovsek's performance with the Las Vegas Philharmonic on Saturday.

The acclaimed violin virtuoso will perform Max Bruch's "Scottish Fantasy" as part of the philharmonic's "Northern Exposure" concert.

Under the direction of music director Harold Weller, "Northern Exposure" also features Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from "Peter Grimes" and Jean Sibelius' "Symphony No. 2 in D Major."

"Scottish Fantasy," a melodic folk-oriented piece, is familiar to Cerovsek, who says it turns up in his performance repertoire a couple of times a year. "It's a very fun, friendly piece," Cerovsek said. "It's a romp. It's not a forehead-creasing, mind-wracking piece.

"There are certain colors in there. Very palatable colors. Beautiful lyrical passages. I love playing them. They give me little goose bumps."

As enthusiastic as he sounds about music, Cerovsek considers returning to academia.

"I've been threatening to do this for a while," he said with a laugh. "The assumption is that you're supposed to be monomaniacal and have this driving ambition to claw your way to the top. I'm just not motivated that way. I love making music. I do want to have sufficient success that enough people want me to play."

Meanwhile, Cerovsek said, "I think about going back to follow the philosophy of math and science. Notions of absolute truth and how they are affected by culture."

The idea of math and music having a connection (dating back to the Greeks) has long intrigued Cerovsek.

"The years I was doing both, they seemed very separate," he said. "But as I progressed I saw that music has a lot of logic. There's a lot of rules. Conversely, as math becomes more abstract, it becomes very intuitive. It grows in strange ways."

Because he spends so much time traveling, including trips to Beijing, Australia and Israel, Cerovsek has little time to dabble in both.

In January he was in Syracuse, N.Y., playing music from the movie "The Red Violin" with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, and last week was playing Beethoven sonatas at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston.

After his visit to Las Vegas, Cerovsek returns to Indiana before heading to San Francisco. During the off-season, he performs festivals.

"They tend to be a lot of fun because they take me around the world," he said. "You get to hang around with musicians for a couple of weeks."

While classical music performances tend to draw older crowds, Cerovsek has some young fans. When performing in Beijing he was swarmed by Chinese youth seeking autographs.

"I love seeing young people at concerts," Cerovsek said. "Part of me, that's just a social thing. As a kid I found more kids my age because they were dragged by their parents."

Regarding the debate between classic musical purists and crossover artists, Cerovsek remains mostly impartial. But he says, "I love it when people come backstage and say, 'This is my first classical concert.' I love that. You want to bring people in. But it's hard to say how many will stay.

"You have to devote a certain amount of time to learn the language."

It's a language in which Cerovsek is fluent.

Though he still looks youthful in curls, he's long shaken the child prodigy image.

"I kind of disassociate with it. It was so long ago," he said, adding that as a young player he looked forward to performing, then going out and "having a few beers with the musicians afterward."

"I always say, 'The career's going to fizzle out sometime.' But the career isn't fizzling out. It's a vocation that's a passion. I want to preserve that feeling. I've been around for a while and I feel comfortable in my skin."