Ring-in fiddler harks back to a golden age

Music fans disappointed that charismatic Australian violin virtuoso Ray Chen is stranded overseas would have felt more than happy with his last-minute substitute.

Simone Young has launched her tenure as Sydney Symphony’s chief conductor with a Sydney Town Hall concert. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

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Sydney Symphony subscribers disappointed that charismatic Australian violin virtuoso Ray Chen is stranded overseas due to the pandemic would have felt more than happy with his last-minute substitute, Munich fiddler Daniel Rohn.

For instead of “the Man with the Golden Strad” they got to see and hear a player whose DNA and performance style links him to the “Golden Age” of violinists such as Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz.

Rohn is the third generation of noted violinists – his father and grandfather were concertmasters for the Berlin Philharmonic during the heady days of the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, and their record collections were the young violinist’s primary teacher. Now he “plays old school in a modern world”, having recorded tribute albums to Kreisler and the “Golden Age”.

Based for now in Kiama with his wife Australian flautist Ana de la Vega and their daughter Lily, the stars aligned for this opening concert of the 2021 season which featured the SSO’s new chief conductor Simone Young.

INTERPLAY

Rohn gave a magnificent performance of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, a work its dedicatee felt was impossible to play. All the virtuosic traps — double stopping passages, “neckbreaking” runs and a devilish cadenza – were dispatched with aplomb and a fair degree of old-fashioned charm and elegance. Young kept the orchestra on a tight leash especially in the faster passages where horses and carriage can easily become uncoupled.

The interplay between violin and the woodwinds in the first two movements was also a highlight, the Town Hall’s dynamic acoustic making it all the more effective.

A series of introductory speeches at the start of the concert may have robbed us of the time for an encore, but hopefully while Rohn is based in Australia we shall see more of him.

Young’s tenure with the SSO promises much musical pleasure ahead when the orchestra returns next year to its home in the newly refurbished Opera House concert hall, and her decision to launch it with a sure-fire hit in Dvorak’s New World Symphony was the right one.

In a work where melodic highlights almost fall over each other, the horns under Ben Jacks’ leadership excelled while Alexandre Oguey’s cor anglais solo in the famous Largo, as always, lifted the hairs of the neck.

This season’s concerts will feature a short new work by a young Australian composer under the SSO’s 50 Fanfares Project. The opening series featured a piece born out of Covid, Uncertain Planning, by Brisbane-based Connor D’Netto which in nine short minutes builds to a veritable orchestral showstopper from its arresting Bartokian start using xylophones and snare drum culminating in a finale full off slipping and sliding basses and brass and manic bowing from the strings.

The concert is repeated at Sydney Town Hall on Friday, February 12, and Saturday, February 13, both at 8pm.

DETAILS

● CONCERT SSO: Romance Begins

● WHERE Sydney Town Hall

● WHEN Thursday, February 11