Ray Chen is the man with the golden Strad
THINGS are going rather swimmingly for Australian violin sensation Ray Chen — a new recording and a record number of concerts on four continents.
Wentworth Courier
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THINGS are going rather swimmingly for Australian violin sensation Ray Chen.
His compelling stage persona — abundant good looks in his Giorgio Armani suit with a Stradivarius tucked under his chin — is being enjoyed more than ever this year with a record number of live performances on four continents.
This means his internet presence — sound bites on social media and funny, savvy videos that go viral — has been put on the back burner for a little. But he promises his fans young and old that he will be back.
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And then there is the record deal he has signed with the prestigious Decca label and the recent release of his first disc with them, his sixth studio album in all, paying tribute to violinists from the “golden age” as well as featuring a superb performance of Max Bruch’s Violin concerto No. 1, which is bound to top the classical music charts.
Now he is back for a Musica Viva tour every bit as enjoyable and superbly executed — despite a broken E string — as his last recital tour here in 2014.
AWARDS
Born in Taiwan, Chen grew up in Brisbane and studied in the US before he first made headlines here in 2011 when as a 20-year-old he performed Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
He had already filled a cabinet with awards, including winning the coveted Yehudi Menuhin Competition, and all our hopes were borne out by that triumphant debut.
Since then we have seen him grow in stature as a performer, including a stunning reading of Dmitri Shostakovich’s first concerto with the SSO and Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Chen manages to combine silky smooth transitions, perfect intonation and sensitivity with emotion and expressiveness.
He approaches his concerts as if he was planning a dinner party and for this two-program tour he has a new culinary partner in French pianist Julien Quentin. The pair have great musical chemistry as was shown in the opening work in this afternoon concert, Beethoven’s violin sonata No. 1, a piece in the classical Haydn mould but in which we glimpse the young composer’s potential to break new ground.
Chen’s talent for fashioning lines of great beauty and delicacy was displayed in his handling of the slow middle movement.
There was much more heft and dark romanticism in the next piece, Edvard Grieg’s sonata No. 2, perhaps his most Norwegian piece in the mould of the Peer Gynt orchestral suite.
Chen and Quentin had to leave the stage a couple of minutes in when the string snapped, but they took it from the top on their return and the incident was passed off with characteristic humour.
METAPHOR
The highlight of the program was a moving new sonata, Dark Matter, composed for the duo by Australian composer Matthew Hindson. The title and inspiration comes from the dark matter in space, which cannot be seen but the effect of which is evident on everything around it.
Hindson uses this as a metaphor for the human condition — the things we don’t see in another person’s life which nevertheless affect our own — and especially in the case of his father, who was dying at the time Hindson wrote the work.
The first movement is an elegy, the violin soaring in a threnody above simple, slow piano chords, while in the second part we feel the angry side of grief as well as the sorrow.
After this “surprise dish” on Chen’s menu the audience was given a trolley of desserts in Manuel de Falla’s piano setting of popular Spanish folk songs, arranged for violin and piano by Paul Kochanski, followed by Vittorio Monti’s ubiquitous Gypsy tune, Csardas.
As if all this wasn’t enough Chen and Quentin returned for an encore from the new album, Jascha Heifetz’s arrangement of Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s song Estrellita.
Chen and Quentin return to City Recital Hall Angel Place at 7pm on Monday, August 27, with a program of works by Hindson, Tomaso Vitali, Cesar Franck, Eugene Ysaye and Maurice Ravel.
DETAILS
● CONCERT: Ray Chen
● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place
● WHEN: Saturday, August 18