San Francisco Classical Voice

Dear reader: The sky is not falling, the earth is maintaining its orbit, and all's well with the world,at least last Friday at Herbst Theater. The reason for my exhilaration and inner contentment is very simple: a wonderful young violinist, 24 year-old Axel Strauss, aided by a superb pianist, Rohan De Silva, taught an admiring audience that "dumbing down" classical music is not the only game in town.

Presented by San Francisco Performances, Strauss, winner of the 1998 Walter Naumberg Competition in New York, proved with a program of Bach, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Korngold and Wieniawski, that a violin recital can be absolutely and totally fulfilling.

Starting with the Third Bach Suite, in E major,for violin and keyboard, BWV 106, Strauss showed at once his maturity by producing a finely wrought tone in the slow movements and crisp bowing and fine left hand work in the two fast movements. The spirit of the work and its period were beautifully realized.

The famous "Kreutzer" Sonata in A major, Op. 47, by Beethoven was splendid. Framing this music from the classical, albeit almost romantic period, Strauss gave it pith and punch, investing the piece with imagination, beauty of sound, again demonstrating first class bowing and his deft left hand. The ideas with which he imbued this well-known sonata were never anything but organic.

Following intermission came the Schoenberg Phantasie for Violin with Piano Accompaniment, Op. 47, from the Second Viennese period. Composed in the 12-tone system, the Phantasie gave Strauss the opportunity to reveal musically Schoenberg's Viennese vision of Vienna, but a Vienna far different than we normally might think--sarcastic, ghastly, fractured and with an occasional Viennese "Schwung." He made it fascinating. In the course of it, the pyrotechnics were handled perfectly, the tone rich when needed to be, and the rubatos were pure Vienna.

Erich Korngold, who elicited the famous epithet, "more corn than gold," because of his enormous successes as a Hollywood film composer, gives the lie to such a canard with his "Much Ado About Nothing" Suite, Op. 11. It is a gem, on a par with, if not musically more adventurous and interesting, than Fritz Kreisler's famous bonbons. The Suite's four movements were deliciously played, again with perfect understanding of the style.

The announced program concluded with the Wieniawski Variations On An Original Theme, in A Major, Op. 15. A stunning tour de force featuring every known and some unknown difficulties, it was also impeccably played. Then came two encores, Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 6, and Kreisler's "Schoen Rosmarin." All's right with the world.

(Stuart Canin, former Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony and of Hollywood film orchestras, is Music Director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra.)

©1998 Stuart Canin, all rights reserved