Russian maestro Ilya Gringolts turns it on in concert in the round

Following on from his stunning appearance in the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s 2023 season opener, fans got an up-close look at the Russian maestro.

Ilya Gringolts performing wth the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

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After his stunning appearance as guest director for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s 2023 season opener, Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts gave his many admirers the chance to see and hear his remarkable virtuosity in an intimate in-the-round solo recital.

Chairs were arranged on three sides of a small performance area marked only by a spotlight, a lone music stand and a glass of water, before the 40-year-old entered the Nielson auditorium in the ACO’s new headquarters at Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay.

Three works were on the program, tracking the origins of solo violin music culminating in the definitive sonatas and partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Gringolts started with Dresden composer Johann Paul von Westhoff’s Partita for Solo Violin No 3 in B-flat major, one of a set of six works that were probably the first written for the solo instrument. The four movements featured extensive use of multi-string cross bowing to give a chord effect, starting with a courtly allemande, a quicker courante and a slow sarabande before a lively gigue using a catchy folk-like tune.

As he played, Gringolts slowly swivelled so that the audiences at the sides and backs could follow him. In between pieces he was interviewed by the ACO’s artistic administration manager Bernard Rofe who regularly makes arrangements of larger works for the chamber orchestra, including the Max Bruch’s first violin concerto which featured in the opening national tour.

Gringolts explained why he had forsaken his usual 1715 Stradivarius for an instrument he borrowed from ACO violinist Ilya Isakovich. Made in 1600 by Polish luthier Marcin Grobliczi, it was a “beautiful” instrument that ideally suited the works on the program.

Next up was the only known published work by Johann Georg Pisendel, who knew Bach and for whom the great man’s sonatas and partitas may well have been written.

His work, also in four movements ending with a virtuosic dramatic set of variations, showed greater use of single singing melody lines, with occasional double stopping and cross bowing for the harmonies.

Bach, whose Sonata for Solo Violin No 1 in G minor, BWV1001 closed the recital, was familiar with both the other works performed and obviously learned from them. Gringolts gave the sonata a no holds barred treatment. Here the soloist, who lives with his violinist wife and three children in Switzerland, showed all the mastery, control and taste that have made him “the violinist’s violinist”.

Nothing showy or extravagant, just the artistry and subtlety that has won his adoring fans throughout the world.

DETAILS

• CONCERT ACO Up Close: Ilya Gringolts

• WHERE The Nielson, Pier 2/3

• WHEN February 14