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RECITAL REVIEW
May 9, 2004
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By Michelle Dulak
Violinists signed by the dwindling "major labels" these days tend to be either Wunderkinder of the just-won-my-sixth-
competition, never-played-a note-out-of-tune-in-the-last-five-years kind, or else "adventurous" players with some interest in
crossover projects. Sony is particularly attracted to the latter type, and it's not terribly surprising to find them signing the
Canadian violinist Lara St. John, nor to discover that her first album for the label is a collection of heavily reworked Bach, with
tabla, electric guitar, self-overdubbing, and much else. The good news is that they are also letting her record some classical
repertoire as part of her eight-disc contract. Judging by Sunday's recital at the Florence Gould Theater, there might be brighter
things ahead than the Sony debut disc's "BADinerie."
Not that the opening Schubert A-major Duo Sunday was especially enticing. St. John played nimbly and stylishly in the faster music;
but whenever she had a chance, she slid around in a manner that was rather more Szymanowski than Schubert. I found myself reeling
moment to moment between "wow, beautifully played" and "good heavens, why on earth did she do that?" Rena Sharon's
partnership at the piano was equable and efficient, which only put the weirdnesses of the violin playing in starker relief.
The same duo made a great deal more of the Prokofiev First Sonata. St. John is the kind of violinist to whom extreme effects come
naturally. The eerie scales — "the wind whistling over a soldier's grave," in the tale St. John was told while studying in
Moscow — were haunting; the second movement was brutal and more than brutal; the third movement, with its serene, uncanny
harmonic shifts, was disquietingly calm. Everywhere the affect was "on the edge," the whispering sul ponticello for the
scales, the harsh, strident tone for the most violent music. And the amazing seductive, velvety sound in the third movement, the
violin wandering through Prokofiev's harmonic shifts like a self-confident ghost.
In between came the Bach D-minor Partita. This work made up half of St. John's debut recording, and Sunday's performance was recognizably by the same violinist, but there were differences too. The similarities: the brilliant chord technique (there are very few people who can "roll" a chord from the top down and then back up as neatly as St. John does); the idiosyncratic but flexible articulation; the tendency to raise leading tones just a little too high for comfort. The differences were mainly refinements, but some of a startling kind. I've never heard anyone lead from the Sarabande into the Gigue as St. John did, for example: leaving next to no time between the movements, and starting the Gigue at the Sarabande's hushed ending dynamic, whispering, only later building up to the normal muscular moto perpetuo. As for the Chaconne, it was not immaculate, but I think that was deliberate. The occasional stridency — some of the arpeggios were particularly, shall we say, obstreperous — seemed to be meant to underscore the music's difficult trajectory. Certainly by the end of the piece no one could doubt that she could play everything with perfect refinement if she'd wanted to; the earlier part of the maggiore proved that. It was a strong and individual Chaconne, one with more profile and more thought than one could anticipate from the ordinary hot young virtuoso. Ron Yedidia's 1997 Rondo Macabre, which came before the Prokofiev on the second half, certainly suggested why St. John appealed to the folks at Sony; I don't think I've ever heard a piece fuller of opportunities for violinistic vamping, and St. John was definitely not one to leave a phrase unvamped. As music it was not terribly satisfying, but as musical spectacle it was pretty well irresistible — the fast bits and the sultry bits alike. St. Johns' encore was Kreisler's "Schön Rosmarin," and she played it just as anyone who had heard the whole program would expect: playfully, intelligently, seductively, with a certain casualness of manner and also a certain casualness of technique. Not the model to present to budding violinists, possibly; but rather fun all the same.
(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.)
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Lara St. John