Virtuoso (Oeuvres de Bach, Franck, Tartini, Wienawski)

Album review

Ray Chen was born in Taiwan, trained partly in the U.S., and has lived in Australia, making for a suitably diverse résumé for a young virtuoso in the era of globalization. With several high-profile competition wins under his belt, his task is to carve out a distinctive style. His style falls generally into the Russian school that shaped American violin tuition, with a quick but expressive vibrato and a sweeping feeling of the long line. His program here is purely in the Romantic violin tradition favored by his teacher, Aaron Rosand, and no nods to historical performance are made in Tartini's Violin Sonata in G minor, "The Devil's Trill," which is performed in its Fritz Kreisler arrangement, or the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2 for solo violin, BWV 1004. The latter work doesn't fare that well here; Chen, as did so many violinists in the old days, seems to work hard at cross purposes with the profound structures of the music. But in the two works by Henryk Wieniawski, including the brutally difficult Variations on an Original Theme for violin and piano, Op. 15, Chen is in his element, and he has what it takes to take command of the listener's experience. The sustained reflective quality in Franck's Sonata for violin and piano in A major (the work, a wedding present from Franck to Eugène Ysaÿe, represents the stages of life) also comes through beautifully, and Sony delivers fine sound from a Berlin studio. The booklet notes, in English only, are engagingly written in part by Chen himself. Is Ray Chen going to be the Chinese star of the violin? He certainly bears watching.

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