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CLASSICAL CD REVIEWS: Accomplished violinists try their hands at Beethoven pairing

What are the odds that two releases with this unprecedented (but logical) coupling, both so interesting, should come along the same month?

Isabelle Faust, fast becoming one of the world's most interesting violinists, takes a stylish approach to these two masterpieces, informed by period insights but basically modern. Vadim Repin, now attaining the patina of middle-aged master in this label debut, exhibits an unreconstructed and unashamed old-fashioned heroism.

KODALY: Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello Op. 8; Duo for Violin and Cello Op. 7; BOTTERMUND-STARKER: Variations on a Theme by Paganini - Janos Starker, cello/ Josef Gingold, violin -

Kalen Riley, 5, and his mom, Shana, made a sweet show of gratitude at the boy's school on Wednesday.

"Thank you for bringing me to school," Kalen said, looking up at his mother from behind round, wire-rimmed eyeglasses. Then he bowed.

"Thank you for being my child," Shana said, bowing back.

Ariadna Rodriguez has performed dramatically as an improviser and as a creative musician. Her wonderful technique and musicality has incorporated a broad musical palette into the violin. She is prepared to show the enthusiasm in a violin solo with pedal in polar position, a new concept that it will be on the evry modern violin vocabulary
www.ariadnarodriguez.com

James Thomas
12/09/2006

300-year-old instruments sound sweet thanks to conservationist

By Ian Fisher,
New York Times News Service
Cremona, Italy | A violin, it turns out, needs to be played, just as a car needs to be driven and a human body shooed off the couch. In this city that produced the best violins ever made, that job belongs to Andrea Mosconi. He is 75, and for the past 30 years, six days a week, he has finger-fed 300-year-old violins, worth millions of dollars, a diet of Bach and Tchaikovsky.

Mstislav Rostropovich, the cellist and conductor who was renowned not only as one of the great instrumentalists of the 20th century but also as an outspoken champion of artistic freedom in Russia during the final decades of the Cold War, died yesterday in Moscow. He was 80 and lived in Paris, with homes in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London and Lausanne, Switzerland.Mstislav Rostropovich gave an impromptu concert at Checkpoint Charlie after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.

By DAVID LINDAUER, For The Capital

To conclude its 2006-2007 concert season, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra has assembled a dazzling program of four works, all written within roughly a 50-year period.

From oldest to youngest, they are: Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" (1895); Jean Sibelius' brooding and lustrous Violin Concerto (1903); Silvestre Revueltas' "Sensemaya" (1938); and Paul Hindemith's rollicking delight, "Symphonic Metamorphosis" (1943).

News Story
Marina Kun: A life and career devoted to harmony
By Ottawa Business Journal Staff

Marina Kun recently hosted a dinner in her home for 18 strangers as part of a fundraising effort for one of several musical associations that she supports.

"It's very interesting to wine and dine people that you don't know," says the president of Kun, the Ottawa-based pioneer of shoulder rests for violin and viola players, explaining that the purchase price of tickets to be entertained at dinners in private homes was an effective means of raising funds for the cause.

The art of funerary violin, although little known today, emerged during the Protestant Reformation and for almost 300 years was an integral part of European interment ceremonies. The Protestant rejection of the doctrine of human intercession left a "spiritual vacuum" into which specialist violinists stepped, their music conveying "both the tragedy of a spirit lost forever to this world and the triumphant ascension of a soul unto the eternity of the hereafter".

King of Waltz brings his romantic violin to town
By OTIS R. TAYLOR JR. - otaylor@thestate.com

ELVIS IS THE KING of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Michael Jackson is the King of Pop, at least until Justin Timberlake is anointed successor.

And Andre Rieu is the undisputed King of Waltz.

The violinist and his Johann Strauss Orchestra will perform Thursday at the Colonial Center.

“It’s one with my body,” Rieu says of the violin.

“When you are the listener, the violin is one of the most romantic instruments, one most like the human voice.”