Violinist Bartosz Woroch On Restraint, Honesty, And Reinventing Every Performance
What does a violinist with 35 years of experience still not know? Turns out, plenty.
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Bartosz Woroch has been playing violin for 35 years. He picked up the instrument as a kid in Poznań, went through the Paderewski Academy of Music, crossed over to Guildhall in London, and somewhere along the way the violin stopped being something he did and became something he is.
These days he performs, he teaches, and he helps run the Nine Arts Festival in Seremban with his wife, Foo Mei Yi, who happens to be a rather accomplished pianist herself.
When you sit down with him, there’s this ease about him. He’s answered questions about music his whole life, but he talks like he’s still figuring things out. Like the answers keep changing.
He laughed when I asked him about those 35 years. Laughed like the number snuck up on him. Performing is still the thing, obviously, but lately the festival work has taken on a life of its own. “It’s a very exciting project and something I’m very grateful to be part of,” he said, and you could tell he meant it.
Here’s the thing about watching him play. I asked if that look on his face during performances—you know the one, where musicians look like they’re having a private conversation with God—if that’s actually what’s happening inside. He said yeah, sort of.
It’s nerves mixed with discovery. “The first few bars are always a little wasted because you’re relearning the room. But once you know the piece, once you’re not scared of it, then it’s like exploration. You let the music take you where it wants that day.”
Where it wants. Not where you planned. That’s how he approaches it. And exploration—that word keeps coming up. He talks about Malaysia the same way. First time he visited, something clicked. “It reminded me of the country I grew up in—the enjoyment of life, the freedom of choice. And of course, the food.” He smiled when he said that last part, the smile of someone who’s had a good nasi lemak and knows it.
But it’s more than the food. It’s how people live here. “That sense of life being lived fully.” You get the feeling he found something in Malaysia that he’d been missing.
The audiences here keep surprising him. Last year at Georgetown Festival, he played ‘A Night in Spain’. Four hundred people showed up. He’s still a little stunned about it. “For a chamber concert in London, it would be very difficult to gather that kind of crowd.” He paused like he was doing the math again in his head. “Some came out of curiosity, but still—it was wonderful.”
So how does he pick what to play? Simple. “The repertoire is usually shaped by the theme or what’s needed in the programme. Sometimes you pick something because it balances another piece. Sometimes because it challenges you in a new way. And sometimes because, well… you just love it.”
That last one. That’s the real reason, isn’t it?
I asked him: when you’re learning a new piece, is it like solving a puzzle or telling a story? “Every piece is like reinventing it. Every time you come back, you find something new. Sometimes I remember how I used to play something and think, ‘Why on earth did I do it like that?’ So yes, the older you get, the more you realize it’s about approaching the music in a new way each time. It’s never finished.” Woroch has been at this 35 years and he’s telling me it’s never finished.
Teaching keeps him honest. He’s at Guildhall and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama now, working with students, and he says it’s a mirror. “When you explain something to a student, you hear yourself and think, ‘Do I actually do that myself?’” The students ask questions and suddenly he’s asking them too.
Even the old pieces, the ones he’s played a hundred times—they’re not the same. “Every piece needs to be reinvented each time. You change, your body changes, your mind changes. If I played the way I did at 18, I wouldn’t survive physically or mentally. So each time you return to a work, you have to find a new way up the mountain.”
When he comes back to Malaysia, what is it about the students here that gets to him?
“There’s a curiosity here. When I teach here, students come with genuine openness. They give me their full 60 minutes, really trying to learn, and I find that inspiring. People come curious and hungry, and that makes a huge difference.”
I asked how his playing has changed over the last decade. He thought about it for a second.
“I’m more patient. When I was younger, I forced things too much—overacted, in a way. Now I try to let the music breathe more. The violin itself sits between wanting to be a diva and wanting to be part of the texture, and finding that balance has always been a struggle. These days I lean more towards restraint, towards honesty in sound, away from forcing drama.”
From someone who could probably dazzle you six ways from Sunday, restraint and honesty are interesting choices.
After all these years, the curiosity hasn’t left him. I asked what he’d commission if he could snap his fingers and have a new piece written tomorrow. He laughed, put his hand on his chin, really thought about it.
“That’s a difficult one. I’d love to commission something for violin with instruments we don’t normally see in the Western tradition—maybe a duo with a Chinese flute, or something with percussion. Something experimental that lets the violin learn from other instruments and other cultures. And if I could pick a composer, I’d say Yii Kah Hoe. His music is fantastic—rooted in Malaysia but open, improvisatory, and full of life.”
There it is again! Curiosity. Openness. He wants his violin to learn from a Chinese flute.
When you watch Bartosz Woroch play, you’re watching someone in the middle of a conversation. With the music, with the room, with himself. There’s no wrestling happening. No forcing. Just discovery happening in real time.
His performances stick with you because they feel like they’re being made up on the spot, even when they’re not. The art of interpretation left breathing instead of pinned down.
And maybe that’s the point. After 35 years, he still hasn’t finished asking questions. The violin is still teaching him things. The students are still teaching him things. Malaysia is still teaching him things. He’s still relearning the room with those first few bars, still letting the music take him where it wants to go that day.
That’s what you hear when he plays. Not someone who figured it all out. Someone who’s still curious enough to keep climbing.
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