Ever get the feeling that this fella who writes for Forbes doesn't really know what he's talking about? So do a lot of other people. But if you'll allow me to play devil's advocate (pun not intended), here is an article from November 1, 1999- found at: http://www.forbes.com/Forbes/99/1101/6411483a.htm
These are fabulous times for fanciers of the fiddle.
By Albert Innaurato
THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING A little demonic about virtuoso violin playing--a savage, untamed quality that you can hear in everything from the fierce strains of Celtic or Cajun fiddle music to classical hellraisers like Paganini and Wieniawski. They even called Paganini "the Devil's spawn," and not just for the possessed quality of his playing; some suspected that in order to coax such sounds from a fiendishly difficult instrument Paganini must have made an unholy bargain.
If that's the case, we appear to be witnessing Satan's ultimate triumph. The world is awash in otherworldly fiddle playing by a host of young virtuosi who seem to have extracted not just musical genius but killer good looks out of whatever bargain they made. How else to explain such musical phenomena as Hilary Hahn, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham and Kennedy (the fiddler formerly known as Nigel Kennedy), among others? At age 19 Hahn is already playing like a fully formed artist, not just another flash-in-the-pan prodigy. Hahn employs vibrato and portamento sparingly, playing with a clean tone and dead-on intonation--a technique that exposes her sound to the harshest scrutiny; it emerges sweetly unscathed.
She announced her lofty ambitions a year ago when she chose to play Bach's impossible sonatas and partitas for solo violin as her Sony recording debut--and achieved an instant bestseller. Her second CD couples the Beethoven concerto with Leonard Bernstein's hard-edged but touching "Serenade." The spontaneity and sense of new discovery--especially in Beethoven--is the achievement of a genius, not a mechanical marvel-tyke.
The 28-year-old Gil Shaham's new Deutsche Grammophon CD of Bartok is splendid (the conductor is the great iconoclastic composer Pierre Boulez). You might also want to investigate Shaham's indecently ravishing versions of two heart-on-sleeve valentines--the Korngold and Barber concertos.
But my favorite Shaham is a new disc devoted to music by Estonian mystic Arvo Pärt. The edgy spiritual glow and joyful suffering in this music are unique. Shaham is the most conspicuous throwback to the old Russian School of violin playing--typified by a shamelessly throbbing tone. Here his Slavic schmaltz contrasts with a straighter "white" tone, to wonderful effect.
Sony is clearly intent on making a mainstream commodity out of matinee idol Joshua Bell. To that end, it has enjoined the 30-year-old Bell to try his deft hand at a wide range of what are sniffily called "crossover" projects. Some work, some don't. Gershwin Fantasy on Sony most decidedly does. Here, Bell lets his hair down and swings, soars, sings, barks and even (heavens!) plays out of tune once in a while.
Bell also displays real moxie in coming to grips with composer John Corgiliano's wild muse on the soundtrack album of The Red Violin. Less successful is Bell's decorous tour through Appalachian fiddle country on the new Sony disc A Short Trip Home. It's all very lovely, but you come away feeling that Bell probably bathes too much to get to the real grit of the so-called old-timey fiddle tradition of Appalachia.
If you want to taste the real thing, you'll have to pluck it off the Web--I haven't been able to find the great Eck Robertson on disc. The Old Time Music Home Page is a hoot. The quotes are priceless--"I made that dad-gummed fiddle talk!" brags Eck, who pretty much launched the old-timey fiddle tradition in the early 1920s. Dag nab it if he don't neither!
The spiritual avatars of the current violin wunderkinder are a lot younger than Eck Robertson. Still, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Anne-Sophie Mutter are already grand dames of the fiddle in their 30s. Such is the youth worship of the genre--and a pitfall for all teenage prodigies who find themselves on the far side of the public's short attention span at what is still an indecently young age.
Such a fate befell Salerno-Sonnenberg--one of the first of the fiddle fatales. In her mid-30s Sonnenberg was already struggling with prodigy fatigue when she had the added bad luck to slice off the end of her pinky while dicing vegetables in her kitchen.
Her pinky has healed and, at age 38, her artistry remains formidable. A touching documentary about her, Speaking in Strings, captures the vulnerability underneath her wild stage manner (sound track on EMI). Her Nonesuch CD, Humoresque, is a campy but touching homage to all feverish fiddle music and the fruitcakes who make it. It's an arrangement of the Franz Waxman soundtrack for that classic three-hanky flick of the 1940s. (That's the one where Joan Crawford, driven to drink by her nutty violinist protégé--played by John Garfield--walks into the ocean.)
Sonnenberg now fuses a kind of hot "on-the-note" style reminiscent of the great Joseph Szigeti, with more vibrato and her own jazzy bending of pitches. She not only swings the soundtrack's Porter and Gershwin excerpts like nobody's business, she even gets old Richard Wagner and crazy Paganini hopping.
Speaking of crazy, you mustn't overlook the tribute to Jimi Hendrix just out from Kennedy. The violin has always favored rock-star temperaments, and Kennedy is no exception. He pulls it off. The Sony disc stays true to both spirits: Hendrix (rock's only true genius) and the original Devil's spawn himself--Paganini. Groove on, Kennedy!
