How do you describe your handedness?

That's not so easy for me to answer, as I lost several fingers on my left hand due to an injury as a child and was therefore always somewhat handicapped to a certain extent.
At the age of six, I was on vacation with my family in the Odenwald and spent the whole time with the farmers helping with the cows and preparing the feed. I made the mistake of trying to pull something out of the chopping machine. That's when the accident happened and I lost the ring finger and little finger of my left hand.

 

Did you learn your instruments “left-handed” right from the start?

No. I started playing the violin right-handed at the age of four.
Two years later the accident happened and six months after that my father told me about a famous quartet from the USA that had a left-handed violinist: Rudolf Kolisch, Arnold Schönberg's son-in-law. Due to an injury, he played left-handed.
As a result, my father restrung the strings of my violin at the time, and in order to be able to hold the bow with my left hand and only three fingers - thumb, index and middle finger - he attached a support to the bow.
I generally had to hold my bow hand a little more arched, but in the end I had no technical problems with the bow, not even when playing staccato and spiccato.

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Please tell us more about your approach at the time and the retraining process. What were the biggest challenges for you?
 

Initially none. I just did it and of course had to make a bit of an effort, as I was still used to the way I had played (i.e. right-handed). However, the fact that my brother Rainer, who was one and a half years younger than me, started playing the violin at the same time as I was relearning, meant that I wasn't alone.
Our father, solo violist at the Mannheim National Theatre, sat in the middle and practiced with us brothers facing each other.
We played music together as a family every day.
Incidentally, until I was 16, I was also a passionate soccer goalkeeper and my brother Rainer was a midfielder. Being a goalkeeper helped me a lot to train the strength of my left hand.
My father told me that I was particularly gifted at hearing all voices. That's why the viola was the more suitable instrument for me.

 

At what age did you switch to the viola?

At the age of eleven. Before I switched to the viola, however, I had to learn Viotti's Violin Concerto No. 22, because my father said: “A violist without technique has no real future”. So I had already reached a high technical level before switching to the viola.

 

Were there reservations from any side regarding left-handed playing?

No. I never had the feeling that anyone spoke to me about my left-handed playing. It wasn't that unusual in the post-war period either, as there were many injured people. For example, a former violinist at the Mannheim National Theater who switched from violin to horn because of his injury.
My brother Rainer and I became a really well-rehearsed team. If we had been placed in different corners without any eye contact: We would have started playing at the same time anyway. When you play chamber music so intensively as a child, it's in your blood.

 

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Please tell us about your musical career.

I got my first job as a solo violist at the Heidelberg Theater in 1963 aged 18 and it was a stroke of luck - it was just a really great time. It was very personal.
In between, I performed with my brother at the so-called “Young Artists' Concerts”, where we were accepted as an ensemble and engaged by many organizers. In 1966, we played 30 or 40 concerts a year.
At some point, however, the time had come for me to leave Heidelberg, although it was a very loving, serious orchestra, as one would wish. A colleague said: “Mr. Kussmaul, you're leaving a life position!” But if you have to move on, you have to move on.In 1968, I decided to go back to studying for myself, I was freelancing and could make a very good living from it. I became a member of the Cologne String Quartet, whose violinists were the concertmasters of the WDR Orchestra and the Gürzenich Orchestra. It was my era of chamber music.
Through my quartet colleagues, I was often invited to substitute in the Gürzenich Orchestra, where we also played in the opera pit. In 1970, the principal viola position became vacant there and the chief conductor at the time, Günter Wand, personally invited me to audition.
I actually won the position out of 25 applicants, which I had not expected. I was all the more delighted.
After winning the audition, however, I was asked to try out once in the orchestra pit to see if it would be possible in the long run. My left-handed playing was also accepted there as completely normal. Nobody said anything to me about it - especially not Günter Wand. I have a lot to thank him for. He was like a foster father to me and I was often a guest at his house.

 

What significance do you attribute to the bow arm in viola playing?

The bow arm contains the soul. It is the bow that actually enables us to express music.
The bow is me. The other thing - the fingering hand - is what I do. If you can get the bow hand right, you can also get the fingering hand right. If someone really pays attention to the bow hand and its techniques, they will definitely become a good player.

It is important to understand: As soon as you are static, your energy is blocked. Life means moving, moving, moving!
It's not about pressure, it's about vibration. Although a certain amount of pressure initially makes the sound loud, the vibration must still be felt and controlled speed is also an essential part of it.
If I put weight in the soles of my feet, I can be light in my arms. I realized that at some point.
The slow movement of Schubert's C major quintet is very long and many people find it difficult to master the bowing technique. Once when I played the piece and noticed that my colleague on the second violin was already getting a very red head, I realized once again how important it is to direct the weight downwards.
When I noticed that something was wrong with my students' bowing, we usually managed to fix it very quickly. Of course, it still takes many years before the technique is really perfected, but as they always kept at it and knew about my support, nobody despaired.

When I was still my father's student, he often asked me in our lessons: “Do you like the sound of what you're playing?”
I had a musical conception of sound and if something was not yet technically clear to me, I always found out over time, with my conception of sound and my technical knowledge, how it should be done. Later, when I was teaching, I was able to articulate all of this over time - often supplemented with words from the field of spiritual wisdom.

Of course, I also had the desire to have a “beautiful” hand - sometimes I couldn't bear my own appearance. I was also afraid of attending dance school because of this and so I preferred to play dance music on the viola.

 

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How did you come by your left-handed instruments?

I received my first violin from a musician whose great-grandson was taught by my father. The instrument went across the border and had already been converted. The viola followed later - a simple viola from my father, on which only the strings and bridge had been changed.
Through contact with a violin maker in Mannheim, I had my first original viola made to the left. And later, after reunification, two left-handed violas were made for me in Erfurt by Wilhelm Brückner, which were ideal and corresponded exactly to my ideas.
At some point I had seven left-handed violas, some of which I gradually had converted back to right-handed and some of which I passed on to my students so that I knew the instruments were in good hands. The luthiers were always thrilled to be able to make something like this.