Word: violining
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Huggett took center stage for the next work, the Sonata in D Major for Violin and Basso Continuo by Jean-Marie Leclair, which she performed with Cunningham and Moll. Huggett and Cunningham have performed together as part of a chamber group, the Trio Sonnerie, and it showed in the lively interplay between the two musicians. Huggett's clear, sharp playing was a marvel, and both Cunningham and Moll, who provided a solid background to Huggett's soaring violin, ably supported...
After the intermission, Cunningham got her solo moment with Marais' Suite No. 4 in A minor for Viola da Gamba and Basso Continuo, prefacing her performance with a definition of what a viola da gamba is-a string instrument more closely related to the guitar than the violin and its ilk, despite its name and appearance--and a discussion of the "softer side" of baroque music, explaining that baroque music was played at a softer volume than music today is. She then proceeded to play the quietest piece in the program, with a rich and hazy sound which made...
...known as the "Waltz King" and composer of the famous Blue Danube Waltz) are always lush, sweeping and charmingly Romantic--an appropriately opulent depiction of turn-of-the-century Vienna. The problem in this piece was depicting the full orchestral grandeur of such a work with only an accompanied violin--a problem Gil Shaham easily overcame. His delivery of the waltzes was delightfully graceful and humorous, striking a perfect balance in all aspects of his playing--technical, lyrical, and otherwise...
...opera Carmen have led many composers to excerpt various dances and songs from the work. The flamboyant style of the melodies have made the work especially attractive to composers looking for virtuoso showpieces, and for no instrument has the opera been more metamorphosized in this manner than the violin. Pablo de Sarasota's Carmen Fantasy is probably the most famous, but there are also violin works by the German composer Franz Taxman and the Hungarian Jennie Hubby. Friday's concert marked a first in that Sham excerpted the most difficult parts from each of these three pieces and created...
Such a performance obviously garners an encore, and the audience actually brought Shaham back for two--one, a joyfully exaggerated rendition of Rossini's The Barber of Seville (think "Fi-ga-ro!"), the other a surprisingly sedate charmer (arranged by one of the most famous of all violin virtuosi, Fritz Kreisler) entitled The Waltzing Dog--both showing Shaham's ever-present humor. All in all Gil Shaham is truly to be congratulated for a successful glimpse at the world of the virtuoso...