Julia Fischer’s sensational violin recital in Ravinia’s Martin Theatre on Thursday night was a neat illustration of how the festival functions as one of the nation’s primary musical launching pads.
The German violinist, who is all of 17, first came to local attention in 1998 when she made her Chicago-area debut as part of Ravinia’s Rising Stars series. She was immediately re-engaged for her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut there the following summer. Music director Christoph Eschenbach so enjoyed working with her that he had Zarin Mehta book the two of them for a duo recital this year.
Fischer is young, slender and blond — no detriment to incipient stardom — but, more important, she commands a superb instrumental gift, a sterling technique that allows her mastery of the violin, and the musicality to make her instrument speak with a thousand colors. Fiddle players labor for years to achieve what this demure-looking teenager already possesses. She should go far in her growing international career.
Eschenbach has collaborated with many such prodigies, here and elsewhere, but seems to enjoy an almost intuitive musical chemistry with Fischer. In a program that held sonatas by J.S. Bach and Schumann, there was no sense of an older master guiding his pupil along but, rather, a partnership of equals.
Judging by their warm and probing accounts of the first three (of six) Bach sonatas for keyboard and violin, BWV 1014-1016, the duo does not require the excuse of the Bach anniversary to inspire superb Bach playing.
The sonatas are actually disguised trio sonatas in which the right hand of the keyboard is treated as a principal melody instrument alongside the violin, with the left hand providing the bass line. There is a great deal more expressive variety in these three dozen movements than one might think. Fischer has all the flair for Bach’s music one would expect from a fiddler who had won a special prize for her Bach playing at the 1995 Menuhin competition. There was no denying the interpretive sparks she and the pianist struck off one another.
From the daringly slow tempo they adopted for the opening movement of Sonata No. 1, it was clear they not only enjoyed taking calculated risks but were able to bring them off convincingly. Slow movements boasted superbly judged weight of tone, accentuating their polyphonic and harmonic richness. Fast movements had a finely etched clarity of articulation and buoyancy of rhythm that invigorated the music.
Originally Fischer was to have played Schumann’s First Violin Sonata, but Eschenbach suggested they perform the superior Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Opus 121, instead. Smart choice: This is a marvelous work, and its neglect in the concert hall is as scandalous as it is puzzling. Their wonderfully spontaneous reading made it appear as if the work were a fixture of the duo’s recital repertory. Violinist and pianist seized on every opportunity to fill the turbulent lyricism of the Allegro with vivid drama and intensity — the audience had all it could do to fasten its seat belts for the ride of its life.
Further, Fischer spun the lyrical slow movement with simple eloquence over her partner’s purling arpeggios. In the outer movements she was unafraid to sacrifice a degree of tonal beauty — her sound tends to be bright and incisive — in her zeal to dig into Schumann’s propulsive, driving phrases. When the dust had settled, her listeners were up on their feet, shouting for more. A deeply considered reading of the Adagio from Brahms’ G Major violin and piano sonata was their reward.
