Favorite violinists

Over the years I've come to treasure certain violinists for their interpretations of particular repertoire, either live or on recordings. For me they somehow "fit" - as if they owned the work. Here's my Top 10:

1. Janine Jansen's Britten Concerto (with Daniel Harding and the Berlin Phil).
2. Christian Tetzlaff's Berg Concerto with the Berlin Phil, where he played Bach as an encore.
3. Gidon Kremer's Erlkonig.
4. Thomas Zehetmair's Mendelssohn Concerto.
5. Thomas Zehetmair's Ysaye Ballade.
6. PatKop's Crin.
7. Heifetz's Korngold Concerto.
8. Alexander Markov's Paganini.
9. Philippe Quint's Red Violin Caprices.
10. James Ehnes's Barber Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

2 of the above violinists have my favorite quartet recordings: Tetzlaff Quartet (Schoenberg 1) and Zehetmair Quartet (Schumann).

I've yet to find my ideal Sibelius Concerto. Rotten Tomatoes award goes to Tetzlaff for his Tchaikovsky Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony. Special mention: Aleksey Igudesman for outstanding comic genius.

Who are your favorites?

New Year's Resolution 2012: "Baby Steps to Virtuosity"

Bill Murray once made a movie "Was ist mit Bob?" (in the German version) where he plays a multiphobic personality coached by his psychotherapist into taking "baby steps" to confront each small problem with the aim of overcoming bigger ones. For 2012 I decided to take baby steps on the violin to achieve if not virtuosity then a kind of fluency. For the first six days of January, I would take one Bach Solo Partita or Sonata and play it through at the end of my practice session.

Well, it's January 6, folks, and I did it! I'm humbled by the fact that I still don't know the C-major fugue from memory (nor have I achieved the perfect fingering for those killer parallel fifths, F/B-flat... is there one?) but I'm in awe of Bach's genius and the meditative perfection of these works.

Now I'm wondering if I can manage all 6 Ysaye Sonatas in the first six days of 2013... something to work towards? (Not to mention the first 24 days of 2014... hahaha).

Wishing all devoted violinists out there a happy year of productive practising and following to unimaginable lengths our craft, our art, our four-stringed hearts.

Coming Soon: Heavy Metal Violin

I am going to be sharing a new article soon about the current popular-culture incarnation of violin heroism invoking and recycling the tropes of heavy metal. KEYWORDS:
*stunt violin, acrobatic violin
*reality show violinists
*gender & sexuality tropes in "performance heroism" (violin: guitar)
*nationalism, Americana, appropriation of an ancient Italian instrument to a recent American musical genre
*heavy metal and Baroque music, stylistic affinities between ~, Walser Redux

Shmuel Ashkenasi's Paganini

The first blog post of the new year comes in response to the total inspiration that is Israeli violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi (b. 1941). Having recently met a former pupil of his who raved about him, I listened to his recording of Paganini's Concertos 1 & 2 (with the Vienna Symphony under Heribert Esser, 1969). Wow. WOW! How can this recording have slipped under the radar of someone authoring a Paganini book for so many years? During that time I have been listening to Salvatore Accardo, Alexander Markov, and Shlomo Mintz (whose recording of the 24 Caprices I grew up with). I would rate Ashkenasi as up there with those ultra-Paganinians - in fact he studied with Ilona Feher, the teacher of Mintz - because he has a quality to his playing that makes you go, "well, that is just ridiculous." I could practise for a million years and still not play those double harmonics like he does. Or downbow staccato. Or ricochet. He also manages to deliver Paganini's music *as music*, somehow -- and not just as a technical exercise. I'm wondering how I can get to hear him live... and wish for violinists everywhere a fantastic year of feeling as blown away as I do right now. Happy 2012, everyone!

Revisiting concerto dynamics

A recent conversation with a Berlin freelancer friend got me thinking once again about concerto dynamics. Without naming names, this friend of mine was describing a certain attitude he observed in a top orchestra - whereby the musicians attained the highest level of playing by, well, terrorizing each other. These musicians are like sharks, he said, just waiting to pounce if you made a mistake. It was basically a communal scare tactic, driving up the standard of playing by provocation, by instilling fear, by maintaining constant and intense pressure.

This disheartens me. Excellence in an orchestra can come out of mutual support and cameraderie, rather than out of such negative dynamics.

When a soloist is playing with an excellent orchestra, the ideal performance is one in which they *lift* each other - in which a healthy rivalry or a competitive edge can play a productive role.

But if the orchestra produces its virtuosity by means of mutual psychological torture, how can their "challenge" to the soloist rise above, well, bullying?

It's ten years since I finished my Ph.D. dissertation on solo-tutti dynamics in violin concertos and I'm still finding unanswered questions on the topic....

Jonas Kaufmann

I've been wanting to hear Jonas Kaufmann for ages. His recordings of Schubert Lieder and Carmen, arias with Abbado, etc. had piqued my interest. Tonight he sang at the Berlin Philharmonie with the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Staatsopernchor: Liszt's »Der 13. Psalm«
für Tenor, Chor und Orchester. I was way up in the nose-bleeds but even there I could hear 2 things. A magnificent voice, even more thrilling live than in recordings (just as I'd hoped). And a terrible piece! Wow, was Liszt hit/miss as a composer or what?

But back to the voice: it is rich. It penetrates. It carries. It has colors. All of this I had expected, and I was not disappointed. But the overriding impression I was left with was that Kaufmann's voice is an instrument and behind it is an intelligent musician. High praise for, like, a singer!

He got 5 curtain calls. It was clear the audience (a full house) had shown up especially to see him. I'll bet Kaufmann was glad to leave a Berlin stage without injury (this summer at the Waldbühne he was bitten by Anna Netrebko after an impassioned duet).

Janine Wildhage & Christophe Landon Rare Violins Exhibition

Janine Wildhage and Christophe Landon have a violin workshop in Berlin Mitte where they make violins and sell old Italian instruments. At last night's "Einweihungsfeier und Ausstellung," they threw a party to inaugurate their new exhibition of beautiful violins, old and new. Armenian virtuoso Mikhail Simonyan showed off his Landon Guarneri copy with a performance of "Armenian Prayer" and Ysaye No. 3. It had a gorgeous sound and a vast range of colors, which Simonyan brought out with a bow so spongy it could have been a bass bow. Having played another of Landon's Guarneri copies the day after he finished it back in New York, I could hear that Simonyan's years-long relationship with his had deepened and ripened its sound. His playing was confident and polished with lots of nice interpretive details and an unusual degree of bow control at the point.

After a few glasses of wine some of the people gathered started to pick violins up off the tables and play a few bars of Bach or Tchaikovsky. There were members of the Berlin Philharmonic there -- earlier in the day they had rehearsed with Nikolaj Znaider, who had, coincidentally, also visited Landon at the workshop that same day. Znaider is due to play Sibelius with the Berlin Philharmonic later this week (review to follow).