Artistic License

We're playing the Bruch violin concerto on this week's concerts with superstar violinist Leila Josefowicz, which is presenting an unusual opportunity for those of us in the orchestra to compare how two different musicians approach the same piece. Ordinarily, a couple of years will go by in between performances of even well-loved concertos, so our memory of the last soloist who played Concerto X will have faded by the time we play it with a new soloist. But in this case, we just played the Bruch with Joshua Bell on our European tour (no, you didn't miss it - we never played it in Minneapolis,) and the interpretations couldn't be more contrasting.

Obviously, both Josh and Leila are outstanding musicians, but they've taken very different approaches to the life of a traveling soloist. Josh, of course, is one of the acknowledged masters of the core violin repertoire, excells at giving audiences emotionally charged performances of warhorse concertos, and dabbles from time to time in "crossover" music. Leila spends a lot of her time and energy seeking out and performing complex contemporary music, and even when playing a piece as familiar as the Bruch, she always seems to be searching for a new way to approach the music.

If I had to sum up the two versions of the Bruch that we've been a part of this season, I'd say that Josh's version was pure comfort food - lush, warm tones, everything seeming to fit together seamlessly, the kind of performance that just washes over you effortlessly. Leila takes what I would call more of a connoisseur's approach to the same music, offering a complicated reading that forces the listener to engage intellectually as well as emotionally.

In fact, Leila gives much of the first movement a distinctly spiky and angular quality that I haven't heard anyone else try in this context. When I first listened to her play it on Wednesday morning, I wasn't entirely sure what effect she was going for, until the moment when the first movement dovetailed into the elegant and beautiful slow movement, and then I suddenly got it. By denying us some of the outright romance that most violinists bring to the first movement, she was making us crave the release that she knew was coming all along. And the simple lines and delicate textures of the slow movement, in turn, set up Leila's ferocious attack on the virtuosic and showy finale. Rather than feeling like three separate chunks of music, as concertos so often do, Leila's approach gives a distinct narrative flow to the entire work.

In the end, I wouldn't trade either Josh's or Leila's interpretation for the other - the Bruch is, I think, one of the more underrated violin concertos in the repertoire, in large part because it leaves so much room for the performer to interpret how it should be played. Getting to be a part of two distinctively different approaches in such quick succession is a rare treat.