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Tag: Kyung-Wha Chung

March 21, 2018

to spring

primavera-1478(1).jpg!Large.jpg

     “Primavera” / “Spring“ (1478) 

              Sandro Botticelli

                   _________

according to long tradition, the 21st of March
has been the first day of spring, but yesterday,
the 20th, two people in separate encounters,
told me that spring had started that very day,
throwing my entrenched supposition out the 
window, for better or for worse

regardless, spring has now, surely decidedly, 
sprung

here’s Beethoven celebrating it, though the 
title, “Spring“, was probably not his, others 
mostly gave his works their nicknames, for 
their own, usually associative, reasons – his
“Moonlight” Sonata also, for instance – but  
that’s been ever enough for me, it’s the 
music that ultimately matters, I think

the “Spring” Sonata, opus 24 then is for 
violin and piano, his 5th such, written in 1801, 
it is an early piece, full still of the verve we’ve 
heard here already in his Opus 5, no 1 for Cello
and Piano, with his musical phrases flying 
right through the bar lines and off the very
page

Kyung Wha Chung plays the violin, she 
remains after all these years my very 
favourite violinist 

enjoy

and have the greatest of springs, 
whenever you might want to start it


R ! chard

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March 10, 2012

Brahms Violin Concerto – Kyung-Wha Chung (1985)

having had a yen for Brahms lately, his grand, sweeping
concertos, I put on again Kyung-Wha Chung last night,
with André Previn, 1996, doing the Violin Concerto, a
good fit at under fifty minutes, while I simultaneously 
washed the dishes – the gods never granted me a
dishwasher, probably to keep me humble, wary of
potentially crippling, I think, hubris 
 
afterwards for the sheer exhilaration of it I wanted to
watch the whole thing over again, but another version
intrigued and beckoned, from 1985, when Chung was of
course younger, less assured, I suspected, her take maybe
less profoundly felt, not yet quite as definitive 
 
but she proved to be again Olympian, on fire, more fierce
in her attack, more defiant, Aphrodite, goddess of love,
beauty, pleasure, this time, still radiant, utterly authoritative
and convincing, paying glorious court to her host of equally
divine peers
 
this performance is of another, of an utterly transcendental, 
order, of the Brahms Violin Concerto you are not likely, nor 
are they, ever to see than either so illustrious a rendition
again
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
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November 12, 2011

Brahms Violin Concerto – Kyung-Wha Chung‏

if, may the gods forbid, you see one concerto only ever in
your lifetime, let it be this one, Kyung-Wha Chung does the
Brahms Violin Concerto incontrovertibly, such performances 
as this one are why composers write music, for interpreters
such as she to narrate their musical thought, to speak it
nearly verbally, indelibly, to bring it to unmistakable and 
categorical life, to transcendence then even perhaps, as in
this case, to our ineluctable, ineradicable consciousness,
and thereby then to our stars 

Kyung-Wha Chung sets the standard here to be achieved for
all artists, in my lifetime she has been the one to displace,
no one, not even the greatest, with the sole exception of
the inimitable of course Glenn Gould, has had the authority,
the brilliance, to outpace her, to outpace them, she is
Minerva, goddess of wisdom, poetry, magic, in outright
and unequivocal command, she is unquestionably and
irrevocably empress here, awesome, she is the highest
expression of music, utterly and irrevocably iridescent, 
incontestably and utterly sublime  
 
André Previn, with the Kölner Rundfunksinfonie Orchester,
the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Cologne, December, 1996,
supports ably, even admirably, he will make me eat my
earlier not especially flattering about him words 
 
watch 
  
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
 
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October 10, 2011

Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64

despite not having the stature of the other composers
already considered, Felix Mendelssohn, 1809 – 1847,
nevertheless squeezes right up the middle with his
the greatest violin concertos of all time, perhaps the
most tender of all in contrast to the mightier, more
imperious declamations of the other also more varied
and prolific masters, an archangel among the august
divinities, having earned a place of the very highest
order in their midst with even this one masterful
work, perhaps even of all the most beloved
 
he squeezed right up the middle chronologically as
well in fact, Beethoven wrote his violin concerto in
1806, while Tchaikowsky and Brahms theirs to my
astonishment each from his own little corner of the
world independently in the very same year, 1878,
a fabulous year, it would appear, for violin concertos 
 
Mendelssohn finished his violin concerto in E minor,  
opus 64 in 1844
  
 
when I began a few decades ago to explore violin
concertos, my essential resource was the set I had
on disc of all the great ones played, indeed definitively
executed, by Kyung-Wha Chung, who bested then to
my mind all, without exception, even the most
celebrated virtuosos, whom I need not therefore 
here recall   
 
until now I had never seen her perform 
 
in this outing she recovers in spades my early adulation, 
utterly, she lives and breathes her enchanted instrument,
she is the Mitsuko Uchida of the violin, I can think of no
higher honour, she is meteoric 
 
André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra, who
accompany her, though accomplished, pale beside her
fire, which is throughout riveting   
 
André Previn was married famously to Mia Farrow way
back when, later married our very own Anne-Sophie
Mutter, though they divorced in 2006, he was a pop,
to my mind, conductor, made of serviceable and
always dependable stuff, but never shining, you’ll
have to leave that to his featured brilliant light here,
who will not, I assure you, fail to deliver searing
heat along with the stated incandescence 
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
 
 
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