Long overdue, well worth the wait

Tuesday, 15 September 2009                   By  Gene Gaudette

  VIOLINIST RACHEL BARTON PINE MAKES HER NEW      YORK RECITAL DEBUT

Rachel Barton Pine made her long overdue New York recital debut this evening at Symphony Space, in a program featuring works by Pisendel, Mendelssohn, Corigliano and Liszt with pianist Matthew Hagle. It was one of the finest recital programs I've seen in a very long time.

Barton Pine is a scholarly and perceptive musician who has restored a number of neglected works to the repertoire, but rest assured: boring she is clearly not. She puts rigorous consideration into her approach to a broad spectrum of music (not limited to classical music, by the way – she also plays with phenomenal metal band Earthen Grave). Her interpretive approach to violin repertoire is at times reminiscent of the urbane approach one associates with Kreisler and Gingold — but she also delivers virtuoso pyrotechnics that are unusually nuanced.

She's found a sympathetic and formidable partner in Hagle. I was impressed by their remarkable musical unanimity, and their remarkable unity and control during striking tempo changes – particularly the fleet accelerandos in the sixteenth-note figurations that grace the opening Allegro vivace of Mendelssohn's F Major Sonata and the adrenalized tempo shifts in the finale of the Corigliano Sonata. Barton Pine brought out the baroque grandeur of Pisendel's solo Sonata in a minor, which not only has much in common with his contemporary Bach but a central Allegro that evokes the sound of Northern Italian baroque string works. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 concluded the program, with Barton Pine and Hagle finding an ideal balance between the concert hall and gypsy camp.

Barton Pine introduced each piece from the stage, combining musical background with her own observations — and providing a few shout-outs to her home town of Chicago, where local classical radio station WFMT was broadcasting and streaming the event live.

Barton Pine and Hagle received sustained and enthusiastic ovations – including uncustomary applause after the first movements of the Mendelssohn and Corigliano, from an audience filled with more than a few well-known New York musicians.

The recital was the third in the newly established New York Chamber Music Festival, which runs through September 20th at Symphony Space. The festival's executive and artistic director, Elmira Darvarova, and her outstanding team deserve congratulations and gratitude not only for this debut recital coup but a superb lineup of programs. Darvarova is herself an excellent violinist, and she will be performing tomorrow night and Thursday with a number of other superb musicians; the festival concludes Sunday with a recital by cellist Antonio Lysy and pianist Pascal Rogé.

While the rest of the music press in town is obsessing over the opening of the New York Philharmonic season under new music director Alan Gilbert, it's a sure bet that the attendees at this evening's recital will tell you the new season is already off to a rousing start.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 16 September 2009 10:14 )

 MUSIC REVIEW | RACHEL BARTON PINE

A Sampling of Strings From Baroque to Gypsy

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: September 17, 2009

The violinist Rachel Barton Pine has recorded plentifully and has performed in New York several times as a chamber player, most notably at the Frick Collection with Trio Settecento, her period-instrument group, in 2006. The program on that occasion was a set of Baroque trio sonatas in which the violin held the spotlight most of the time. But it turns out that Ms. Pine had never played a traditional recital here, the kind with just piano accompaniment (or none) and with a program that ranges across a few centuries and style.

She rectified that omission on Tuesday evening with a recital at Symphony Space as part of the hall’s New York Chamber Music Festival. Because Ms. Pine is a star in Chicago, her hometown, the concert was broadcast live on WFMT, Chicago’s principal classical music station, with the radio personality William McGlaughlin as the host and, unaccountably, a permanent stage fixture. Though he did not conduct an interview with Ms. Pine or introduce the works (Ms. Pine did that herself), Mr. McGlaughlin sat at a table on the stage through both halves of the program, sometimes writing or drinking water. Was that absolutely necessary?

Ms. Pine began where her Frick performance had left off, in the heart of the Baroque, with a Sonata in A minor for Unaccompanied Violin (1717) by Johann Georg Pisendel, a contemporary of Bach and a kindred spirit. Like Bach, Pisendel provided a single line of music, phrased in ways that invite a player to create the illusion of counterpoint. Ms. Pine accomplished that with deftly shifting articulation and color. You may have wished, all the same, that she had played Bach instead, but Ms. Pine made a valiant case for Pisendel as a reasonable alternative.

She was joined for the rest of the program by Matthew Hagle, a sensitive pianist who knew when to defer, and when deference would be counterproductive. They proved a well-matched duo in Mendelssohn’s Sonata in F (1838), which gives both players singing lines as well as sparkling, brisk figuration.

But it took them a few moments to find common ground. Ms. Pine’s phrasing was oddly breathless at first and seemed to push against Mr. Hagle’s more settled pace. She found her bearings by the end of the first movement. In the central Adagio she played with a warm tone that stopped just short of lugubriousness, an approach that set up the sizzling finale perfectly.

Ms. Pine recalibrated only slightly for John Corigliano’s Sonata (1963), a neo-Romantic work that thrives on melody, but uses chromaticism freely to give its tunes both a modern cast and a touch of unpredictability. It has stood up remarkably well: having weathered a period when consonance was suspect, it seems prescient now that a generation of composers have adopted Mr. Corigliano’s eclecticism.

Ms. Pine and Mr. Hagle closed their recital with fiery accounts of two showpieces rooted in Gypsy fiddling: Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and, in an encore, Cesar Espejo’s “Airs Tziganes.”