Arts & Entertainment

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Violinist gives knuckle-busting performance

By: Holly Harris

Posted: 03/22/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

There was no room to hide as Virtuosi Concerts' guest artist Jonathan Crow performed a rare, bow-defying program of solo-unaccompanied violin works Saturday. The chamber music series featured the Canadian violinist during the aptly titled season closer The Solo Unaccompanied Violin Virtuoso, with the lanky musician fearlessly striding onto a barren stage to present a full evening of mostly 20th-century music influenced by J.S. Bach.

Born in Prince George, B.C., Crow, 33, currently teaches at his alma mater, Montreal's McGill University. He is, notably, the youngest concertmaster ever to have led a major North American orchestra with his appointment to Montreal Symphony's top chair in 2002. He twice performed as a soloist during the late 1990s under the baton of late violinist/conductor Sir Yehudi Menuhin who quickly became a fan of the young artist.

Crow last appeared on the VC stage seven years ago with Canadian string trio Triskelion and maintains a lively chamber music career in addition to his regular guest solo appearances.

By anyone's estimate, it's a daunting challenge to tackle a two-hour program on your own. Only a few hardy instrumentalists -- such as pianists and violinists -- can arguably carry it off. The latter must rely solely on four strings and a horsehair bow to create enough melodic and harmonic interest to sustain the listener's attention. It was risky business for VC artistic director Harry Strub to program this concert, but fortunately Crow proved he has what it takes.

It's possible that many of VC's loyal music lovers were also there when the intimate Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall was formally dedicated to its namesake, the late Winnipeg composer/violinist/pianist Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté in 1993. Hearing Crow perform her haunting Caprice No. 7:Le départ d'un train E.69 in virtual darkness accompanied by a projected series of 27 original portraits of the composer packed an emotional punch, with the visuals only underscoring the technically dense work with poignant humanity.

The program also included late 20th-century Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim's Sonata in G for Solo Violin, written for Menuhin that melds European classical practice with Middle Eastern influences. Crow's fiddle soared to its highest heights before plummeting to the depths while capturing the vitality of the rhapsodic Allegro energico.

holly.harris@shaw.ca

CONCERT REVIEW

Virtuosi Concerts

Saturday, March 20

Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall

Attendance: (187)

four stars out of five

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 22, 2010 D8

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