Livia Sohn brings a decidedly electric current to her violin artistry: a pupil of Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, and Felix Galimir, and she serves on the faculty of the music department of Stanford University. She plays a J.B. Guadagnini violin of 1770, whose strikingly acerbic and lulling sweet tone cuts like a hot knife through the buttery pages of several of her selections, some of which prove rare repertory, indeed.
Sohn opens with Hungarian virtuoso Jeno Hubay’s 1877 Fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen, which splices the Fate motif to Micaela’s aria, the famed Habanera that Carmen sings, and the Toreador’s song and march. Lushly ornamented and spectacularly fleet, Sohn treats her violin like a marvelous rapier cutting embellishments swiftly through the air. Sohn then proceeds to perform a sweet fantasy by Joachim Raff, a Weimar favorite of Liszt who later moved to Frankfurt. His 1853 fantasy focuses its figurations on the Wedding March, with some pearly roulades and arpeggios for the piano as well. The blazing tessitura and the scherzando at the conclusion are worth the price of admission. The familiar Samuel Dushkin arrangement of Parasha’s aria–the Chanson russe–a tripping figure in folk style, possesses a diaphanous, transparent beauty. Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960) composed the opera Ainadamar around the life of Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca. His execution by Fascists at The Fountain of Tears provides the basis of Lorca’s aria “Desde mi ventana.” It becomes a plaintive duet featuring Sohn’s husband, violinist Geoff Nuttall, intoning the voice of Margarita, Lorca’s soulmate.
Kurt Weill’s musically related songs from The Three-Penny Opera are arranged by Stefan Frenkel as part of a suite of Seven Pieces. Sohn demonstrates considerable “pluck” in the extended pizzicato section, and her rasping and wily flute tone injects no end of canny irony into her rendition. Quite extended is Prutsman’s fantasy on themes from Der Rosenkavalier, including a semi-shriek and arioso based on overture and the Act II Presentation of the Silver Rose, the mood easily reminiscent of Waxman’s suite from Tristan for the movie Humoresque. Several waltzes pass by, as does the trio Hab’mir’s gelobt from Act III. At several points we hear riffs from the Op. 18 Violin Sonata. Large scale and ambitiously florid, the Der Rosenkavalier makes a compelling case for the passion and sweep of this most Mozartean of Strauss scores. Paganini’s 1819 setting for Rossini’s cavatina “Di tanti palpiti” was a Francescatti favorite, displaying a broad spectrum of techniques, including bel canto legato, scordatura tuning, thirds, triple stops, left-hand pizzicati, and chords in harmonics. The last pages fly by, the sparks silvery, glittering like swirling stars. Loeb’s arrangement of the Bizet duo for tenor and baritone has the viola filling in for the liquid music I used to associate with Robert Merrill, the violin in Bjoerling‘s part. It’s effective for those “opera without words” aficianados who must subscribe the KDFC-FM concept of “palatable vocalism.” Szigeti’s arrangement of the 1888 “In vain, my beloved” from Lalo’s The King of Ys provides an urgent yet simple vocal line over a broken chord accompaniment that could have been composed by Gottschalk. All very pretty, even quite marvelous by some standards.
— Gary Lemco
