Taiwanese-Australian violinist at Koerner Hall with pianist Julio Elizalde
The classical world finds itself in an odd predicament right now: it has a dearth of young audience members and a surfeit of young performers. Every now and then, we read op-eds pronouncing the imminent collapse of the industry, inevitable because of the greying of the consumer class. The malaise is attributed to various factors: the availability of more music—most of it non-classical—to more people than ever before, on YouTube and Spotify; declining standards of public music education; and so on and so forth.
But surely the young musicians are not to blame. If anything, they are reinvigorating the art form, drawing more youthful and diverse audiences and advocating for repertoire, old and new. In many cases, they are dynamic public figures, adept both at playing their instruments and cultivating the kind of social media presence that fans now demand.
Ray Chen is one such artist. Chen, 30, won two of the world’s most prestigious violin competitions: the Menuhin (2008) and Queen Elizabeth (2009, and not that Queen Elizabeth; this one is Belgian). Astonishingly, he only made his first Toronto appearance less than two weeks ago, on 8 November 2019, at Koerner Hall. He was partnered by the superb pianist Julio Elizalde.
The first half of the programme consisted of Grieg’s second sonata and Saint-Saëns’s first. Neither piece is, to my mind, representative of its composer’s best work. The Grieg has good ideas but suffers from a lack of formal discipline. It comes across as discursive and overlong. The Saint-Saëns has the opposite problem; it is so refined that it occasionally lapses into banality. That said, it still contains good ideas, like the delightfully unsettled opening of the first movement.
Chen and Elizalde were beyond reproach in both pieces. It was especially impressive that they played all 45 minutes of material from memory. This is hardly the norm in chamber music, and it speaks to their deep commitment to the compositions. Perhaps that is the best way to play second-rate music: treat it as if it were first-rate music.
After intermission, Chen returned to the stage alone for Bach’s Chaconne. His conception of the piece was rooted in the romantic tradition, out of step with the chaste renditions of HIP and HIP-influenced violinists like Isabelle Faust. Though it was an undoubtedly expressive performance, it was not to my taste. I found, for example, the way in which Chen drew out the cadences at the end of the first and second sections mannered and disruptive of the flow. It gave the impression that the Chaconne was really three pieces strung together, rather than one continuous whole. But these things are highly subjective; some may have enjoyed Chen’s interpretation for its no-holds-barred, throwback (to Heifetz and Milstein, et al) quality.
I thought that the next two pieces were ideally suited to Chen’s style and technique. Debussy’s Clair de lune, in the Roelens transcription, was delicate but not wan. Ravel’s Tzigane was impassioned and piquant. Chen’s fast vibrato, too intense for my liking in Bach, was perfect there. The programme was to end with the Ravel, but Chen and Elizalde were called back to the stage four times. The encores were showpieces for Chen—what might be described as “great violin music” rather than “great music for the violin”. The most interesting was the first, A Evaristo Carriego, an orchestral tango which the duo heard while on tour in Argentina and arranged for their instruments.
As a final note, I observed that the concert was nearly sold out. In addition, the audience was notably younger than the hand-wringing administrators and marketers might have expected. Perhaps the ages of classical performers and their listeners are once again converging, and we can finally stop writing obituaries for music which has clearly retained its attractive power.