I have been following The Irving M. Klein International String Competition
almost since my arrival in the Bay Area back in 1995. This was due in
part to the fact that every year the winner of this competition played a
recital at the home of a friend (and sometime colleague) in Portola
Valley. Now that I am based in San Francisco, I am glad to see that the
Noontime Concerts™
series at Old St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco now hosts a
one-hour recital by the Klein winner, this year violinist Tessa Lark,
accompanied for this program by Tim Bach, a frequent accompanist for
recitals at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Presumably the
program was representative of what it takes to win such a competition, a
combination of musicianship, breadth of repertoire, and a facile
display of technical fireworks.
That last ingredient seems to
require that, in the manner of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, the
soloist include the encores as part of the proper program. However, the
problem with spectacular encores is that, from a musical point of view,
they tend to venture into the ridiculous; and sometimes it is hard to
tell just how seriously one of those composition should be taken. In
the absence of any better criterion, I tend to follow the judgment of
Jascha Heifetz, who seemed to have gotten away with making a recording
of just about anything he felt was worth recording. If Heifetz
did not record it, then he probably felt that it had ventured too far
into the ridiculous for his tastes.
Having set that bar, I can now report that Lark's "encore," Henryk Wieniawski's Opus 15 variations on an original theme, was not
recorded by Heifetz; and it definitely has some of the principal
hallmarks of questionable taste. To begin at the beginning, the work
commences with the sort of interminable introduction that was the
opening gag of Erno Dohnányi's "Variations on a Nursery Tune,"
which bears the wonderful subtitle, "For the enjoyment of humorous
people and for the annoyance of others." Wieniawski's theme is not
quite as trivial as Dohnányi's choice of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star;"
but it is decidedly modest in the face of the flamboyant treatment it
receives, most notably when the soloist launches into a passage of
extended bariolage (a term I could not resist using, since I only
learned it yesterday).
The only way to listen to a composition like this is to sit back and
enjoy the fun, and Lark certainly delivered all the requisite fireworks
with the good humor of a tongue planted firmly in her cheek.
The
more serious portion of the program was divided between the Opus 13
sonata by Gabriel Fauré and the first two movements of Johann Sebastian
Bach's A minor sonata for unaccompanied violin (BWV 1003). I have
always felt that the Fauré sonata was as good a candidate as any for
that Vinteuil sonata that plays such a crucial role in Charles Swann's
love life in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Its
andante movement (the one so crucial to Swann) has just the right
combination of longing and wistfulness that it seemed Proust was trying
to evoke; and Lark was wonderful at capturing that spirit.
Furthermore, her sense of acoustic balance with accompanist Bach was
impeccable in the Allegro vivo scherzo movement, where the relationship
between violin and piano is at its most critical. It was a near perfect
performance that would have fit right in with one of Proust's refined
salon settings.
Lark's approach to BWV 1003 was less secure.
Technically, she could manage the realization of the multiple voices of
the Fuga movement; but it sounded as if she did not have a sense of the
overall shape of either that fugue or the Grave movement that preceded
it. There was no arguing with the refinement of her sound; but neither
movement gave the sense of a thought-out journey that conducts the ear
from the opening gesture to the final coda.
Nevertheless, Lark is a
confident performer. I suspect that it is only a matter of time until
her command of Bach matches that of Fauré, and her approach to encores
is sure to leave her audiences delighted. If one of the advantages of concert-going on a tight budget is the opportunity to hear emerging talents, then today's concert was a perfect example of such an opportunity.
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