Music review: This might be the concert of a lifetime
Concerts like this don’t come around often. To hear one of the world’s most esteemed violinists up close at UKARIA was something very special indeed.
Joshua Bell is more than a familiar name. A Grammy Award-winning, best-selling artist, and known for being equally at home performing Bernstein in the Hollywood Bowl as he is collaborating with Sting and playing bluegrass, he is widely revered as one of the finest violinists of the present day. Suffice to say, this American violinist carries a formidable reputation.
To hear him close up and personal was one of the more intriguing prospects of the year. Added to which was knowing that two of his four Australian appearances would be here in Adelaide. Inside a week at the conclusion of his Southern hemisphere tour, Bell would be playing once only at Sydney’s City Recital Hall and the Melbourne Recital Centre, and twice at UKARIA Cultural Centre – such is the latter’s unique pulling power.
At the same time, apprehension can come with contemplating an artist of this ilk. Bell is known for gesturally strong playing and his powerhouse technique, and how his whole charismatic package could even fit inside UKARIA’s intimately small space felt unclear, to say the least. Yet this was definitely the concert not to miss if one wished to witness the pinnacle of violin playing.
Mozart, Schubert and Fauré would be on the program: nothing too fancy, and again more questions in search of answers.
So it was straight in with Mozart’s Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor, K. 304, with compatriot Peter Dugan at the piano. A perfect tempo and with neither of them overplaying, this was time to forget any preconceptions and enjoy: this beguilingly simple but most gorgeous of chamber works was being given its loveliest performance. Bell’s vibrato is what one noticed at first. It is discrete, not wide, and applied with the naturalness of a singer and coupled with a tone that is exceptionally clear, focused and warm.
You might like
Contrasts felt just right, too. Against this singing style, Bell brought out the staccato octave passages to link up the first movement with bite. Not too much, just enough to give it tension.
Bell’s 1713 Stradivarius is a handy tool to have, but equally evident was that UKARIA’s acoustic was to the liking of both these musicians. That was surprise number one: their contained sound and the intimacy of their playing felt entirely at home.
Dugan reveals himself to be a most wonderful pianist and chamber musician. Bell can pick whoever he likes: from Jean-Yves Thibaudet to Yuja Wang, he’s played with the best pianists, and this young American is right among them in his articulate, impeccably judged artistry.
Joshua Bell and Peter Dugan at UKARIA. Photo: Claudio Raschella
Subscribe for updates
One admired particularly in Schubert’s Fantasie in C for Violin and Piano, D. 934, how delicately Bell plays. Its first note emerged from the quietest pianissimo over the piano’s tremolos. The delight was then how the two instruments bounced off each other with impetuous playfulness. Whatever else Bell is as a big, charismatic concerto soloist, he is a most superb chamber musician, and Dugan as well. Neither draws attention to themselves but rather lets the music take the form of a conversation.
Schubert gives the violin plenty of scurrying virtuosity in this sonata and pushes it up sky high at the end. In the real world, it might be too much to expect every tiny sliver to come out spotlessly, but that was only half the story: Bell delivered it so with a dance-like ease and effortless grace that made one smile.
Artists at this level seem to be insatiable, and Fauré’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A, Op. 13, presented whole new challenges with its fuller sonority and turbulent passion. A severe test are its climbing octaves in the Allegro molto, and in 10 takes in the recording studio a violinist might get these nice and clean. Here they were so flawless and breezed away that you could cut glass with them. If one could pinch one’s ears, one would have done so.
It was about this point that one felt this might be the concert of a lifetime. Bell seemed to be thriving. Perhaps part of it was the thought of concluding a no doubt exhausting international tour. Just as likely, living on adrenalin – which is evidently what he does all the time – and enjoying the special acoustic of this Mount Barker concert hall were the explanation. In his concluding words, Bell did personally thank Ulrike Klein for creating UKARIA in the name of art, gaining an immediate round of applause.
But more was to come. Moving the listener into new territory were three additions to the program that showed more of his artistry. As a kid, Bell was taught by the master violinist Josef Gingold, himself a product of the Russian school and student of Eugène Ysaÿe in Belgium. To hear double stops and other assorted high-virtuosity gymnastics done to perfection in one of Ysaÿe’s ballades was thrilling.
To then hear Bell’s own arrangement of Chopin’s Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2, was a total joy as well. Crowning it all off was Wienawski’s phantasmagorical Scherzo-Tarantelle, this composer having taught Ysaÿe.
All of which makes Bell the living exponent of a tradition stretching back more than 150 years.
Blessed with superhuman gifts, this wonderful musician elicits the most beautiful sounds from the violin, is supremely at the top of his game, and is exceedingly generous with his audience.
Let’s see what else UKARIA can program in the new year.
This is a review of Joshua Bell with Peter Dugan, UKARIA Cultural Centre, December 7. UKARIA’s program for the first half of 2025 is online now.