Perth Concert Hall
reviewed by Neville Cohn
When Ray Chen puts bow to string, it instantly triggers memories of violin greats: Yehudi Menuhin, Heifetz, Elman in their prime. There is about his playing a seeming effortlessness, a lyricism that places him well to the forefront of the world’s current line-up of fiddle greats. The magic so gratifyingly in evidence when Chen gave a recital with Timothy Young here in Perth a few years ago, was no less splendidly in evidence on this occasion.
This was wondrously apparent in his account of Ysaye’s Sonata for solo violin in D minor. It’s from opus 23, one of a number of solo violin works which are ferociously difficult, no-man’s-land for any but the most skilled of fiddlers. I think of it as an extended, ruthlessly demanding cadenza – and in every sense, Chan was more than up to the challenge. Now lyrical, now passionate, the playing was informed by an immediacy that brought one face to face, as it were, with the composer.
Matthew Hindson’s Violin Sonata No 1 – Dark Matter (2018) – has been given its world premiere performances on Chen and Quentin’s current Musica Viva tour. With an alert and very skilled Julien Quentin at the piano, we were taken into Hindson’s idiosyncratic musical world.
The Sonata is dedicated to the composer’s father who passed away shortly after the work was completed. In a program note, Hindson tells of his childhood years when he and his siblings were taken to violin lessons by their father, “learning the violin alongside us”. Much of the first movement is quiet – it comes across like a gentle, melancholy song, rather like a sad lullaby. In the second movement, virtuosity comes to the fore. Presented with considerable intensity, it’s an essay in passionate virtuosity.
Attributed to Vitali, the Chaconne in G minor was the perfect curtain raiser, those oh-so-well-known notes here sounding as fresh and beautiful as a flower just opened. And its moments of defiant power were no less impressively presented.
Whether gently introspective or passionately virtuosic, Chen and Quentin were much on their mettle in Franck’s too-frequently programmed Sonata in A – but not even intrusive, ignorant applause between movements could detract from the frankly stunning wizardry these two musicians brought to their offering. And then the duo gave us a sizzlingly virtuosic account of Ravel’s Tzigane. Bravissimo!
