By Barrymore Laurence Scherer

With over 30 CDs to his credit, a raft of awards including multiple Grammys and Emmy nominations, Joshua Bell is possibly today’s most celebrated American violinist. And as much as his playing has beguiled the most stringent music critics, his personal charm has made him an icon well beyond the confines of classical music. Having performed at the Indianapolis 500 Victory Celebration (he has a penchant for fast cars) and appeared on screen as himself opposite Meryl Streep in Music of the Heart, Bell is a classical musician as familiar to the proverbial man (or woman) on the street as he is to seasoned concertgoers.

Apart from his unquestionable musicianship, a fundamental aspect of Bell’s playing is the beautiful individuality of his tone. This is widely attributed to his studies, beginning in boyhood, with the late Josef Gingold, who had successively been a violinist in Toscanini’s NBC Symphony and concertmaster of George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra before his tenure as professor of music at Indiana University. “My teacher certainly influenced my approach to sound,” says Bell.

“He definitely had the most beautiful violin sound I ever heard ‘live.’ And his approach in general was never about power. Instead he drew you in—you wanted to sit down next to him and just absorb it. The timing of his phrasing—his way of playing rubato—was very much from the old school. Gingold was always seeking beauty even in showy music. He would lovingly play passagework in a Paganini or Wieniawski concerto, and there was never a moment when it sounded mechanical. That was a very important lesson for me. You make music of every note—including the flashy parts.

“The instrument helps a lot,” he continues, “but one’s sound begins in one’s own head. I guess the kind of sound I would like to strive for is one that is not always identifiable. Every note of a phrase warrants a different vibrato depending on where it is coming from in the phrase and where it is going, as well as the emotional temper of the phrase as a whole.”

But a violinist’s sound is only a vehicle for the music he plays. Bell’s repertoire has been an important part of his appeal and a vivid reflection of his musical thinking. He warms to the subject of repertoire he deems unjustly neglected. “The other Bruch concertos come right to mind. And Wieniawski’s concertos and solo works. Vieuxtemps wrote beautiful things—beautifully crafted. Saint-Saëns is another vastly underrated composer—wonderful craftsmanship and lyricism.”

Not surprisingly, the 20th-century works he favors are the more lyrical ones, like the Barber Concerto. On the other hand, Bell admits that “some important 20th-century works are conspicuously absent from my repertoire. I haven’t gravitated toward the Berg Violin Concerto. I find it beautiful—intriguing and wonderful to hear. But it doesn’t call out to my fingers. I will wait until it does and leave it, for now, to the violinists who truly have that calling.”

In September, Sony Classical released Bell’s first CD of duets: At Home with My Friends, in which he joins forces with a variety of artists including the composer and double-bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer, baritone Nathan Gunn, and singing actress Kristin Chenoweth, as well as less expected names like Sting, Josh Groban, Chris Botti, and the Latin group Tiempo Libre. With such a varied roster, it is no surprise that the duets range over a variety of musical styles, most of which are often lumped under the heading “crossover,” a word that rankles Bell.

“I think crossover has gotten a bad name because it is associated with something popular. I like making recordings like The Voice of the Violin. They’re new arrangements that I’ve worked on, and I’m very proud to do something that stands on its own, with nothing like it already on the shelf.”

Bell strongly feels that a lot of new admirers have been drawn to his mainstream classical concerts by the wide recognition he has achieved with crossover appearances on such CDs as Josh Groban’s Closer and certainly by his film appearances. In addition to The Red Violin, his playing is an important feature of the charming Ladies in Lavender, and he is also featured on the soundtrack of Angels and Demons. “People regularly come up to me after my concerts and say, ‘I never heard of you before,and never came to a classical concert before. But I heard you on this CD or in that movie, and here I am.’”

In September 2008, Bell returned to his alma mater to undertake a series of master classes at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. When discussing the dearth of classical-music education in America, he says he feels that the more effective way to introduce school kids to music is not just by teaching them how to appreciate it, but how to play it.

“I visited a school in Brazil that copied Venezuela’s El Sistema [the state-funded National Network of Youth and Children’s Orchestras]. I listened to these kids and was amazed by their playing. An orchestra of 18- to 25-year-old students played a Mendelssohn overture with such passion and beauty that I was in tears. I told them I wished we could play something together. In fact, they had prepared the Mendelssohn Concerto, which we played through and it was absolutely wonderful. I think if kids study music and actually play it, they are much more likely to forge a real bond with it. And they will also become the future audiences.”

If Joshua Bell has his way, they’ll get that message loud and clear.

Barrymore Laurence Scherer is a classical-music and fine-art critic for the Wall Street Journal. His book, A History of American Classical Music, won ForeWord Magazine’s Music Book of the Year Gold Award.