Ray Chen's Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor

May 24, 2015 at 08:15 PM · Greetings,

wonderful player. Enjoyed it very much. I think he has a very clear sense of what the music is doing and where it is going and and this mental clarity comes out in some transitions in the first movement (only part I have time to listen to right now) where he switches character.

With a player this good it is just a question of taste. My idea of the Mendellsohn veers towards a slightly leaner, less romantic version. Ray has such a beautiful sound I felt , paradoxically, at times I wanted to hear less of it:) I very occasionally wanted to hear sequences varied in ways other than just more of the beautiful sound, though like I said above, all logically organized to my mind. I think if he was more ordinary, or sour, at times the absolutely beautiful passages would have been enhanced even more. Would have liked more bass notes at the end of the cadenza .I think the trick here is to make a link between those bass notes and the bottom notes of the bariolage passage that follows rather than seeing it as the start of something new. My reasoning is that, as I am sure Ray is well aware , this is a very malicious joke on the part of mendelssohn. He hypes the soloist up to the nth degree in the cadenza then asks them to start the barrio large at a tempo where the orchestra can play the them without sounding silyy. It goes wrong more often than not and even with Ray and the very experienced KN it barely held on ,, in my opinion. But if you play the bass notes of the bariolage like a deep rooted impulse coming up from the ground or the sea or whatever, absolutely dictating the beat then everybody knows what they are doing and the cadenza and following passage have a much more organic connection.

All trivial stuff. Looking forward to hearing it again in a year.

Cheers,

Buri

May 25, 2015 at 04:07 AM · Ray plays wonderfully. Quite the showman as well.

May 25, 2015 at 06:51 AM · Yes, what is there to disucss. He plays it beautifully. I prefer the expression 'exemplary' and so on.

Cheers,

Buri

May 25, 2015 at 06:57 AM · I think the discussion could be more interesting if we can compare his interpretation with some other musicians'. Different interpretations could be good in different ways. I am not trained enough to distinguish the differences between his and others'(like Hilary Hahn's?), maybe someone can enlighten me?

May 25, 2015 at 08:18 AM · Greetings,

if I were you I would just sit back and really hang your ears on the sound from beginning to end. Dont let anything distract you. If necessary turn the visuals off. Too much discussion of good music making can just become a pop quiz. And he`s our man anyway...:)

Cheers,

buri

May 26, 2015 at 04:08 AM · Another very nice Mendelssohn in my opinion is Janine Jansen's performance, you can find it on youtube easily.

If you want to distinguish between top-level performances, one "starting point" is to listen carefully to the transitions in the piece, where it goes from fast to slow or from loud to quiet or a change in mood, and you'll pick up on differences.

May 27, 2015 at 03:42 AM · Thanks for the tips. Sometimes I would notice say differences in the strength of accents, and I'd prefer one over another quite unambiguously.

An easier example is Kreisler's Leibesleid, somehow everyone plays differently(accents, glissando, etc)Perlman, Meyers, or even Kreisler himself.

May 27, 2015 at 05:36 PM · Liebeslied is just a salon piece, not serious literature. "Interpretation" of such a thing will vary widely, but the contest seems to be who can get the closest to the boundaries of good taste.