"A Violinist to Listen to, Maybe After a Download"
The New York Times, May 5, 2007

An article about Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, who makes her debut on the big stage at Carnegie Hall Saturday night (May 5) with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She’ll be playing the Mendelssohn concerto; Orpheus boldly opens with two pieces by Poul Ruders (Credo and Trapeze), and closes with Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. For details regarding tickets, look here.

I’ve grown more impressed with Jansen each time I’ve encountered her, in concert, on record and in conversation. She’s an excellent player whose full range has yet to be documented by her Decca recordings. Her three discs for the label are all eminently worthy (especially that much-discussed Four Seasons, among the best modern-instruments accounts available), but her taste for unusual repertoire is limited so far to two discs on Naxos devoted to works by John Harbison and Robert Helps, and one highly entertaining collection, 24 Capriccios for Violin from the Netherlands, on NM Classics. With luck, Decca will eventually document her urgent interpretation of Britten’s concerto.

I’m keeping it short tonight, because I have to drive a truck to Richmond, VA in the morning to retrieve Dr. LP’s worldly possessions. But I have to report that the Jacob ter Veldhuis concert at the Whitney Museum’s Altria space this evening was practically perfect: an ideally paced sampler of some of his most effective pieces, played by a parade of New York’s new-music elite (cellist Dorothy Lawson, flutist Margaret Lancaster, pianist Kathleen Supové, the Meehan-Perkins Percussion Duo and Kevin Gallagher’s Electric Kompany). The space was perhaps slightly too reverberant to catch every single detail, but enough came through to convey the sophistication of Ter Veldhuis’s layering of recorded voices and music. The White Flag, in its world premiere, was even more powerful and moving than the demos that Gallagher had sent me.

Back soon…

Playlist:

Myra Melford and Tanya Kalmanovitch – Heart Mountain (Perspicacity)

Pēteris Vasks – Distant Light – Anthony Marwood, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (Hyperion)

Henryk Gorecki – String Quartet No. 3, "…songs are sung" – Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch)

Black Sabbath– Live at Hammersmith Odeon (Rhino Handmade)

Kate McGarry – The Target (Palmetto)

Suzanne Vega – Beauty & Crime (Blue Note, due July 17)

Genesis – Trick of the Tail, Wind & Wuthering and …and then there were three… (Atlantic/Rhino remasters, due May 15)

Christopher DeLaurenti – Favorite Intermissions (GD Stereo)

Satoko Fujii Min-Yoh Ensemble – Fujin Raijin (Victo)

Fennesz Sakamoto – Cendre (Touch)