REVIEW: Violinist Ray Chen and Julio Elizalde in Recital at Disney Hall

March 29, 2024, 2:28 PM · "I've never seen a line this long," marveled one of the concert workers who was managing a crowd of about 120 concertgoers waiting to get an autograph and perhaps a photo with violinist Ray Chen following his recital on Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Violinist Ray Chen and pianist Julio Elizalde.

It was a testament to the rock-star status of Chen, who has grown a robust online following (for example 880,000 followers on his Instagram alone) with his humorous and affable posts - and his smoldering violin technique.

It was the latter that was on display on Wednesday - as well as his exuberant stage personality - something that all those online clips suggest, but that is wholly remarkable to experience live.

Performing with longtime musical partner Julio Elizalde, Chen played works by Bach, Beethoven, Tartini, Bazzini, Dvorak and even a special arrangement of Chick Corea's "Spain" - as well as an assortment of post-program "dessert" pieces. The pair played three encores, to the delight of the crowd, which was left applauding for even more.

The evening began with Giuseppe Tartini's "Devil's Trill" Sonata, a Baroque-era piece, in an arrangement by the highly expressive early 20th century violinist Fritz Kreisler. The piece was inspired by a dream in which Tartini made a deal with the Devil - then transcribed what he could remember upon awakening. Playing the piece by memory with his signature wide old-world vibrato, precision trills, double-stops and high-energy bowing, Chen's interpretation definitely expressed a romantic, virtuosic vision of this piece. One could imagine Chen channeling the infamous Paganini - another violinist who was reputed to have a made a "deal with the Devil" in exchange for his enviable chops.

Next was Ludwig von Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor (Op. 30, No. 2) - which Elizalde introduced from the stage, explaining that the composer originally labeled it as a "sonata for piano, with violin accompaniment." Wait, Ray Chen, accompanying? Chen's intensity made it a little hard to focus on anything else, but Beethoven's writing does feature the piano, and this was some conspicuously gorgeous playing from Elizalde - particularly in the beautiful second movement, the way he sculpted every phrase on that Steinway piano. They hit their stride as a team in the bouncy third movement, in which their dialogue was full of varying shades and nuance - their interaction was a joy to watch.

Chen was on his own for J.S. Bach's Partita No. 3 in E major - a favorite for us fiddle players. It has seven movements - the first a prelude, and then six that each named after various dances of the era. The first-movement Preludio is a stream of notes with many string crossings - when accomplished violinists play this movement extremely rapidly, sometimes the actual pulse gets lost. Chen managed to create this lovely wash of notes while still placing some guideposts to keep the listener from losing the downbeats.

There are a lot of ways to play Bach, and violinists have parsed his Sonatas and Partitas every which way for some 300+ years. On one side of the spectrum would be a "historic performance" using baroque instruments and bows from Bach's time, with minimal vibrato, notes that decay, adhering pretty literally to the idea of these movements as being dances. Chen was on the opposite side of that spectrum: using a wide and romantic vibrato, playing with a modern bow, sustained notes, and using the dance element as more of a jumping off point.

The Loure was quite slow, sustained - I tried to imagine it as a dance, and the image came to mind of an older person, perhaps a little tipsy, dancing alone with their memories. Actually quite beautiful. I also like this movement as a somewhat perky dance - but the beauty of Bach is that it holds up to so many different interpretations.

In the Gavotte en Rondeau - a dance in three, Chen often placed a pause after the first beat and used rubato - playing around with the beat. In fact, that pause was a feature for a number of the dances, playing the first few notes of each section with some hesitation and then launching more rapidly in to the rest. Throughout, the intonation was impeccable, and in these movements with no piano we really got a sense of the golden tone of the 1715 "Joachim" Stradivarius violin that Chen plays (on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation).

At this point, Chen let us know where we were at in this "meal" of a recital program: we'd had our appetizer (Tartini), our meat and potatoes (Beethoven), and our "palate cleanser" (Bach) - now it was time for dessert! Here comes the "fun stuff," and it truly was.

Before playing Antonio Bazzini's highly virtuosic "Dance of the Goblins" Chen joked from stage that "only prodigies play this - and I'm too old to be a prodigy!" Hmmm - perhaps it's been more than a decade since Chen won first prize in both the Yehudi Menuhin (2008) and Queen Elizabeth (2009) competitions, but he clearly still knows how to throw down - in this piece he tossed off long passages of highly coordinated down-bow ricochet with aplomb, along with double-stop trills, left-hand pizzicato harmonics - and then there's a business of playing the same note on four different strings in rapid succession. So many amazing tricks! The audience loved it, and when he jokingly shook out his left hand and "blew out" his fingers afterwards (no doubt they were "on fire!") the audience loved it even more.

That was followed by another virtuoso vehicle - Kreisler's arrangement of Dvorak's Slavonic Dance No. 2 in E minor, full of melodic double stops.

The last programmed piece was a truly interesting and engaging arrangement that Chen and Elizalde created together of a jazz piece - Chick Corea's "Spain." This also was full of effects - a slow introduction featured an eerie sul ponticello entrance for the violin, then with some knocks on the wood of the violin they launched into faster music-making. Here was a dance with a true pulse - Chen grooving over all kinds of interesting rhythms and melodies in the piano, all coming to a true culmination in very rapid and rhythmic bowing - tossing off the melody in octaves. By the end about a half-dozen broken hairs were bobbing from the tip of Chen's bow, making the bow itself look like a jazzer bouncing his head and grooving to the beat.

This brought the entire sold-out audience to its feet, and after several ovations Chen and Elizalde offered more - in fact they came back for three encores.

First was "A Evaristo Carriego," a tango piece that the two of them wrote together while touring in Buenos Aires in 2017. Aww heck, just have a listen:

The second encore really brought down the house - Chen started making chirrupy bird sounds, way high on the E string, over some piano rumblings, and this somehow segued into a perennial favorite, "Czardas" by Monti, but all humorously over-the-top. This was Czardas on steroids, Czardas on 10 cups of coffee, even Czardas on laxatives. There larger-than-life drama, breakneck speed, interspersed with the slow and soupy. Everyone loved it - they were back on their feet, begging for more.

The pair ended with a more sentimental piece, the lovely and melodic "Estrellita" by the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce, arranged by Jascha Heifetz. Yes, there was more standing, more begging for more - the audience would have kept them playing all night, but at last it was time to go (or to stand in line for Chen's autograph!)

What a pleasure, to see such an enthusiastic crowd, with so many young people, enjoying the talents of these two excellent musicians.

Violinist Ray Chen and Laurie Niles, at his signing after the concert!

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REVIEW: Violinist Ray Chen and Julio Elizalde in Recital at Disney Hall

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