The great nineteenth-century violinist and composer Henri Vieuxtemps took less than two weeks to learn Beethoven's deeply personal D major violin concerto (opus 61). The performance by Jennifer Koh at the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, NY (July 19, 2015) is painful evidence, for me, that Romanticism is cold in the ground. Koh remarked in a pre-concert interview that she had to walk away from the concerto for six years, in order to purge herself (I suppose) of the accrued influences of the ages. Would that she had not! Her lack of vibrato, slides, and position changes, and other expressive devices of the great Romantics and their heirs, up to and including Perlman, Shaham, and even Kremer, were absent or barely audible. I recall with immense pleasure hearing, as a child, a recording played for me by my grandfather, of Grumiaux singing -- not just playing! -- this astounding piece of music. One can only imagine how Vieuxtemps must have opened the piece: silvery lines slinking like enchanted serpents through the Arcadian lushness of the orchestra. Oh well. Jennifer Koh might as well have been a computer, spitting out the data pumped into her by some unimaginative programmer. It is sad, because I adore this concerto, and I recall the days of yore when I attempted -- and failed -- to perform it myself. It is no easy task to sing Beethoven's notes. Yet here we are, in a day and age in which lovely women with little talent gain attention for simply looking fine on the concert platform, damn the performance. A notable exception, of course, is Julia Fischer: beautiful but overwhelmingly gifted with the voice of the ages. Listen, if you'd like to recover from Koh's languid performance, to this fine example of the decaying Romantic art. We need a necromancer, a true master of the black arts, to raise Classical music once again to the demanding, sensual, and even subversive artform that it once was, and should be. I regret wasting the better part of my Sunday evening listening to Koh drag her tender heels through one of the most verdant soundscapes of the repertoire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N15_3_TP7I