The Week in Reviews, Op. 124: Rachel Barton Pine, Leonidas Kavakos, Anthony Marwood

By Laurie Niles: In an effort to promote the coverage of live violin performance, Violinist.com each week presents links to reviews of notable concerts and recitals around the world. Rachel Barton Pine performed Bach's sonatas and partitas.

• The Washington Post: "What Pine communicated was pure Bach, his pleasure in working out musical ideas, his architectural structures large and small and his reverence for both the struggle and the peace that music can offer. Her talks about each piece, consummate scholarship delivered with humor and modesty, was an additional ornament to her performance."

Leonidas Kavakos performed Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Dallas Symphony.

• TheaterJones: "Its technical demands are legendary and Kavakos met them all head on. His passive and determined demeanor was only occasionally ruffled. The dichotomy of his physical deportment and the passionate music pouring out of his violin was striking."
• The Dallas Morning News: "With a big, rich, gleaming tone, Kavakos had all the ardor and virtuosity one could wish, compromised only by occasional patches of rushing that no orchestra could have matched. Start to finish, the DSO played wonderfully."
• Dallas Observer: "Kavakos, grimly business-like in demeanor on stage, serves this masterpiece up with a brilliant combination of technical perfection and intellectual insight."

Anthony Marwood performed the Adès with the New World Symphony.

• South Florida Classical Review: "Performing the concerto was the violinist Anthony Marwood, for whom it was written and who performed its world premiere. Like many contemporary violin concertos, the work barely gives the soloist a moment’s rest. Marwood plunged into the virtuosic first movement–an embroidery of rapid arpeggios and almost impossibly high passages–with a hard-driving, fearless momentum that he kept up to the end."

Please support music in your community by attending a concert or recital whenever you can!