The Miraculous Violin: A CEWM Evening with Vadim Gluzman & Angela Yoffe @ the Mahaiwe, Dec. 21 [Berkshire on Stage]

In technique and sensibility, violinist Vadim Gluzman harkens back to the Golden Age of violinists of the 19th and 20th centuries, while demonstrating the passion and energy of the 21st century. Lauded by both critics and audiences as a performer of depth, virtuosity and technical brilliance, he has appeared throughout the world as a soloist and in a duo setting with his wife, pianist Angela Yoffe. Gluzman’s warm tone, developed out of his miraculous “ex-Leopold Auer” Strad (on which the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto was premiered!) takes its inspiration from the timeless examples of Mischa Elman, Nathan Milstein and David Oistrakh. A legendary violin in the hands of a master, and a dazzling holiday program with music of Mozart, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Castelnuovo-Tedesco will be heard on Saturday, December 21, at 6pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington with Angela Yoffe as his chamber music partner.

Gluzman’s extraordinary artistry both sustains the great violin tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries and enlivens it with the dynamism of today. A recent music critic captured the singular quality of his approach to violin playing: “Most remarkable was his ability to sustain Tchaikovsky’s romantic emotionalism without falling into vibrato-drenched clichés,” wrote Chris Waddington of New Orlean’s Times-Picayune. “Gluzman did it by unleashing an astounding palette of colors from his violin: a golden hive-like droning, finger-snap pizzicatos, and a plunging dive-bomber wail that had me thinking of klezmer — and of Jimi Hendrix calling down fire from heaven in ‘Machine Gun.’” He goes on to say, “For folks who prefer the classics, I’d sum up Gluzman this way: He is better than Itzhak Perlman, better than Midori, better than Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and all the other big-name string titans who have soloed with the LPO [Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra] in recent years.”

Click to read the rest at Berkshire on Stage.