Bell Epoque

By DAVID MERMELSTEIN

Santa Monica, Calif.

Many adjectives accurately describe the American violinist Joshua Bell, but "ubiquitous" works best of all. He seems no sooner to leave a place than to return there with a new program. Since the beginning of 2011, for example, he has performed in the Los Angeles area five times, and he will appear here again later this month, with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and also in July, at the Hollywood Bowl. Such frequent visits are, of course, a measure of his longstanding popularity. Mr. Bell remains boyishly handsome at age 44, and his dynamic stage presence and unrestrained virtuosity are real draws for audiences that prefer their serious artistry spiked with matinee-idol panache.

Christopher Serra

"I probably do too much," Mr. Bell acknowledged over lunch last month, the Pacific Ocean serving as a picturesque backdrop. "I want to do everything. That's my problem. Life is short, and I hate the idea of turning down anything. You never know what interesting experience might happen. This is not a good way of thinking. I was going to have an almost three-week break this month, but then, sure enough, an offer to open the new hall in Las Vegas came up. And then China called. I couldn't refuse; I hadn't been to China in a year-and-a-half."

Mr. Bell clearly can't help himself. Indeed, he recently added conducting to his already packed schedule. On April 11, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, he begins a 15-city U.S. tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, a chamber orchestra based in London whose music directorship he assumed last September. He will lead the ensemble from the violin in three different programs, on which he'll also serve as soloist in concertos by Beethoven and Bruch.

"It combines everything I love to do," Mr. Bell said of the endeavor, "but I don't have to deal with a middleman, the conductor. I control everything this way. Plus, I'm discovering the symphonic repertoire. I've always loved it, but now I get to put my mark on it."

For those concerned that he may be getting ahead of himself, Mr. Bell injects a dose of modesty. "I shouldn't call myself a conductor yet," he said, "but it's something I'm kind of migrating toward. It's always something I thought I would do at some point, and I think this is a really nice way to do it. As the years go by, I might occasionally drop the violin and see how it goes just leading the Academy."

Mr. Bell took no formal instruction in conducting, though he has led concertos from the fiddle for many years and served as an "artistic partner" with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from 2004 to 2007. "My whole life I've been observing," he said. "And lately I've been asking opinions of friends who are conductors. Conducting is a strange thing to teach. There are very few great conducting teachers, and most great conductors don't teach. Look at Valery Gergiev—what he does is not teachable. A lot of it is on-the-job training, what works and what doesn't work. And I learn from bad conductors as well. I learn when an orchestra rolls its eyes."

The violinist maintains that the "diplomacy of conducting" should not be underestimated. "You have to be strong, because otherwise the musicians won't respect you," he said. "But you want them to like you, too. So you need the right amount of humor and insistence. And you can't treat them like an instrument, as some soloists who move toward conducting do. They think rehearsing an orchestra is like practicing. But you don't keep starting and stopping as you would at home. You've got to learn how to manage a rehearsal."

Soon even those unable to hear the Academy and Mr. Bell on tour can assess their collaboration. The orchestra and its new music director will be recording Beethoven's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies for Sony in May. "Those will be my first recordings as a conductor," Mr. Bell said with a hint of trepidation. "Of course there are a million versions of the Beethoven symphonies, but we're going to add ours to the mix. It's a different experience with us. It's more like chamber music. Even with the best big orchestras, there's room to hide. But here it's a smaller orchestra, and no one's conducting on a podium. I'm leading from the violin. No baton, though I may use my hand when I'm not playing."

As for the mechanical details of his efforts, Mr. Bell has a ready answer. "The unspoken secret is that an orchestra can play without a conductor to a certain extent," he said. "Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal—the vision, the structure, the architecture. That's not done in the moment, and that's what separates one interpretation from another."

Fans of the violinist should not fret that his forays into conducting will diminish his solo career. There is no danger of that, he insists. Instead, likening musicians to explorers, he suggests that conducting is merely an expansion of his existing interests. "You're visiting all these great wonders," Mr. Bell said, referring to musical milestones. "And this opens up a whole new set of them. There's also the challenge of it. What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don't, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth. For some, it's commissioning new pieces—and I want to do more of that, too—but this is a way I can challenge myself and do something new."

Mr. Mermelstein writes for the Journal on classical music and film.