Violinist performs as soloist, conductor for Royal Philharmonic

For most virtuosos, playing the solos in a Mozart violin concerto would be enough for one concert.

But not for Pinchas Zukerman.

Not only will Zukerman (who also happens to be a renowned viola player) perform Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5, he'll be leading the orchestra, Britain's Royal Philharmonic, Sunday at The Smith Center's Reynolds Hall.

Rounding out the program: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and Edward Elgar's Serenade for Strings.

Out of 16 concerts on the Royal Philharmonic's current cross-country tour, Zukerman (the orchestra's principal guest conductor) is playing and conducting 13.

"It's very pleasurable from all points of view when the orchestra and myself play; it's a united front," says Zukerman, 67. "Sometimes you can do magical things."

But "there's no mystery to it," Zukerman says of conducting.

"From a public point of view," a conductor's main task may appear to be "the waving of the arms," he notes, "but that's secondary."

Indeed, when Zukerman and the orchestra collaborate on the Mozart concerto, "there's no time beater," he explains. Instead, he'll be "looking up and leading," performing as he would with a chamber orchestra. (Zukerman's 1983 Las Vegas debut, he recalls, came with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, followed by a performance five or six years ago with the Zukerman Chamber Players.)

Zukerman first began studying conducting at Juilliard's famed music school in New York, which he attended as a teenager, following studies in his native Israel.

"You need to learn how to conduct," he explains. If you don't, Zukerman says, it's like saying " 'I've been in an airplane many times — I can fly it.' I don't think so."

Zukerman made his official conducting debut in 1970 with the English Chamber Orchestra and "two to three years in, I started doing symphonies without the violin," he recalls — primarily because "I was being nagged by the players to give it a try."

After "I worked my tail off, I got to bigger pieces," Zukerman says, "and it's been going on for quite a long time."

All his life, in fact.

"When you venture into music, it's been a life journey," he reflcts. And he means that literally.

His father was a klezmer musician; "violin was his livelihood back in Poland," Zukerman notes. Zukerman's father also played clarinet, another klezmer staple, and "he even played the saw."

As a boy in Israel, where his parents moved after surviving concentration camps during World War II, Zukerman played duets with his father.

"First came clarinet, then recorder and then violin," he recalls. "I wish I could play piano still — not only in concert, but for pleasure, but I haven't kept it up."

At 8, Zukerman began his formal musical studies in Tel Aviv. And in 1961, two musical icons — cellist Pablo Casals and violinist Isaac Stern — heard him play, setting the stage for his violin and viola studies at Juilliard. (Stern eventually became his legal guardian, overseeing Zukerman's musical development.)

"There's a lot of work involved — practice, listening, playing with all kinds of different ensembles," Zukerman says of his musical journey. "It's a huge library of life experience."

Zukerman has performed with the Royal Philharmonic since the early '70s, but when he first conducted the orchestra on a trial basis, "I thought, 'Wow, this is pretty good.' It felt OK."

And now, after seven years as the Royal Philharmonic's principal guest conductor, Zukerman describes the orchestra as "quite an incredible machine."

Their collaboration has "an incredible spontaneity that's sort of happening when we play," he observes. "That's very unusual. There's not an ounce of blase" in the orchestra.

There's not an ounce of blase in Zukerman, either.

"If asked to, I would play fourth violin, eighth viola," he says. "It's an extension of making music."

That passion for making music extends to future generations.

"This is a very important element: compulsory music education in schools," he asserts. "Put that in bold letters. I think it's so important that we hold hands and have a united front: that every child in America should have musical education. Otherwise, there will be more guns in the streets."

After all, "it can't just be sports — baseball and football and hockey," argues Zukerman, who cites former students from around the world who contact him to report "tremendous results" from their own pupils.

"It's not an easy thing to convince people," he concludes, that having "edifices of culture" is not enough. "You have to have something on that stage."

Read more stories from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.