San Francisco Classical Voice

YOUTH MUSIC REVIEW Magnificent Youth

March 17, 2002

By Michelle Dulak

Judging at the Junior Bach Festival is hard work. Ten or more hours of violinists playing more or less the same few items is wearying. (We get bits of the E-major and D-minor Partitas, mostly, with third and fourth movements of all three solo sonatas thrown in, and occasional Adagios & Fugues from the G-minor Sonata.) There are always "what on earth was your teacher thinking?" moments, and there are always kids who are so underprepared or so frightened that you can scarcely think for pity.

But then there is the reward, which is hearing music-making on an incredible level, from kids of an age that has already been written off as lazy and cynical. Could've fooled me — this year more than ever. I've been a Junior Bach judge for several years, but never before have I been so eager to find out afterwards who the players were. There are some brilliant young violinists out there.

Ask, and ye shall receive

I had just been griping to my fellow judges that no one ever does the B-minor violin Partita at Junior Bach, when we got the schedule for the afternoon auditions, including a complete B-minor Partita. And when it came it was magnificent — poised, pensive, clear-toned and strong. But it wasn't even the best of the afternoon. There was a G-minor solo sonata from a 15-year-old violinist that was on the highest professional level — technically immaculate, but also musically intelligent in rare degree. Getting around the chords in the fugue is difficult, but understanding the counterpoint in the Siciliano is a hundred times harder, and this kid made music of that movement in a way that a lot of better-known violinists could not. It was a marvel.

Oh, and then a complete E-major Partita by a 10-year-old boy with the sound and the confidence and the musical understanding of an adult. And two magnificent Chaconnes, and a brilliant D-minor Partita minus the Chaconne, and much else. I was overwhelmed.

So when the Junior Bach website launched its 2002 program (www.juniorbach.org), I leapt at it. The violinist of the B-minor Partita turns out to be Owen Dalby, concertmaster of the SF Youth Orchestra. The flabbergasting G-minor Sonata was Nathan Olson; the E-major Partita, Zenas Hsu; the D-minor minus the Chaconne, Michelle Choo; the Chaconnes, Matthew Kan and Karla Donahew.

A Junior Bach sampler

I was able to catch only two Junior Bach concerts, on Sunday in Berkeley, and I soon found that I didn't know the half of it. I'd been listening to the violinists (and a few larger string ensembles); I had no idea what the keyboard players were like. Well, some of them are monstrously gifted. Preben Antonsen, ten years old, played the C-minor French Suite with a kind of poetry very few pianists have at any age. The Sarabande was almost impossibly beautiful — hushed, graceful, delicate but never weak. Jannie Lo's C-minor Partita, deft and strong, was nearly as fine. But the younger pianists were also marvelous, right down to the small girl who played every one of the fussy ornaments her teacher must have insisted on in the G-major Minuet from the Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook.

And the violinists? My God. Zenas Hsu's blistering E-major Partita was almost a concert in itself. But before it came Eunice Kim (10)'s half-a-G-minor-sonata (the Fugue and the Siciliano) and after came Justine Leichtling (14)'s intense renditions of the third and fourth movements of the C-major sonata. Then, in the next recital, Doori Na (10) played two movements of the E-major Partita with amazing style and panache (the deft bowing in the Gavotte en rondeau was a pure pleasure), and Jason Feng (16) did the same for two movements of the G-minor Sonata. And in the second half, a rather beefy but damned impressive D-minor-minus-Chaconne (Michelle Choo, 13), followed by the Chaconne itself from Matthew Kan (16) — intelligent, suave, and uncommonly beautiful.

I only wish there were more of an audience. The people who come to Junior Bach concerts — to the two I attended, anyway — seem to fall into the three categories of parents, teachers, and photographers. This is sad all round. The playing I heard this weekend deserves a bigger audience than that.

(Michelle Dulak, editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, is a violinist and violist who has written about music for "Strings," "Stagebill," "Early Music America" and The New York Times.)