The Week in Reviews, Op. 527: Joshua Bell, Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Karen Gomyo

November 25, 2025, 10:39 PM · In an effort to promote the coverage of live violin performance, Violinist.com each week presents links to reviews of notable concerts and recitals around the world. Click on the highlighted links to read the entire reviews.

Violinist Joshua Bell with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Anna Handler. Photo by Winslow Townson.

Joshua Bell performed Thomas de Hartmann's Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Anna Handler.

The Arts Fuse: "Bell’s line emerged like wafts of smoke; he was more of a sleekly ghostly presence than a heroic one. The violinist’s silvery radiance was offset by shouts from the brass, reminders that all was not well in this memory. Yet, even amidst this infusion of bleakness, Bell generated flickers of warmth."
EarRelevant: "The Concerto is strong, beautiful, fresh, and well redeemed from obscurity. Joshua Bell performed it beautifully, and Maestra Handler and the orchestra collaborated in like vein."
The Boston Musical Intelligencer: "Ever the master craftsman, Bell was elegant as he drew the music from his instrument with intense precision and passion blending with the BSO meticulously....His ability to invoke each note from his instrument with silken dexterity enabled the audience to savor every one of them."

Kelly Hall-Tompkins performed Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto with the Bangor Symphony.

Bangor Daily News: "Hall-Tompkins has played the piece more than 20 times with different orchestras. She has an intimate relationship with it and that showed in her passionate and expressive performance."

Karen Gomyo performed Bernstein's "Serenade" with the New World Symphony.

South Florida Classical Review: "So compelling and deeply probing was Gomyo’s account at the New World Center that it made one reevaluate the work. Perhaps all Bernstein’s creation needs is a performance that put depth of expressive content over flashy superficiality. That is exactly what Gomyo delivered. From the violin’s first notes, her tone soared and she cut to the music’s lyrical heart."

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed Bach’s complete Cello Suites at Boston's Symphony Hall.

Boston Classical Review: "While Friday’s traversal didn’t exactly offer a narrative of life, it did mine—and very powerfully—the depths of expression latent in this music as well as its undying freshness. Indeed, by the time Ma got to the Suite No. 6 one was struck anew, if not bowled over, by the music’s seemingly endless capacity for invention, creativity, and recreation."

Augustin Hadelich performed the Barber Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic.

New York Times: "Hadelich brought a contained urgency to his performance, with chiseled phrasing and an unwavering solidity at the core of his voluptuous sound."

Théotime Langlois de Swarte performed and led Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" with Les Arts Florissants at the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium.

Washington Classical Review: "In the Andante and Largo movements, de Swarte played with limpid tone, accompanied only by cellist Elena Andreyev and Hartoin. In the fast movements, de Swarte displayed remarkable speed and accuracy, often with quicksilver accelerations."

Alexi Kenney performed Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

San Francisco Classical Voice: "With the electrifying and eloquent violinist Alexi Kenney as soloist and ensemble leader, the drama, tension, caressing tenderness, and even violence that can make Vivaldi’s work so gripping came through and then some."

Nicola Benedetti performed Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic.

New York Times: "...the Scottish-born Benedetti presents it with the fierce pride of a co-creator.....during an extended cadenza...Benedetti left her privileged perch next to the conductor and threaded her way through the orchestra ranks....I was disappointed to see no discernible reaction to the subtle dramaturgy from the string players."

Pekka Kuusisto, performed Stravinsky's Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

Bach Track: "Pekka Kuusisto embraced this playfulness wholeheartedly....Kuusisto’s playing was unrestrained in the best sense – committed to finding the humour, the humanity and the improvisatory spirit embedded in the concerto’s pages."

Alena Baeva performed Dvorak’s Violin Concerto with the Ulster Orchestra.

News Letter: "From the start she had an air of authority, and with the sensitive accompaniment of the Ulster Orchestra, she gave a dazzling performance of this challenging piece, particularly in the more familiar final movement."

Jack Liebeck performed Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending" and Saint-Saëns' "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso" with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra.

Weekend Special: "In Liebeck, Vaughan Williams had an ideal interpreter. Playing a sweet-toned Guadagnini of 1785, he produced a sonic representation of George Meredith’s skylark, captured in a poem of 1881 that shows in turn a clear debt to Shelley’s 'To a skylark' of some sixty years earlier."

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performed sextets by Brahms and a world premiere by Julia Moss.

Violinist.com: "With their delicate touch and bow control, these musicians achieved a great many fine gradations ranging from surface sound through a deeper more speaking tone, then back again."

Baiba Skride performed Britten's Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 15 with the Houston Symphony.

EarRelevant: "Skride is a sincere, unaffected, and inwardly expressive artist with a beautiful tone—an ideal fit for the concerto’s more lyrical sections."

Elfida Su Turan performed Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto with the Haslemere Musical Society.

Liphook Herald: "The Finale, a jaunty Bohemian dance, saw violin and orchestra in full celebratory flight, ending in dazzling high spirits and earning a well-deserved standing ovation from an enthusiastic audience."

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The Week in Reviews, Op. 527: Joshua Bell, Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Karen Gomyo

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