Violinist David: 20th-Century Delights By Cecilia Porter
Washington D.C., U.S.A. – Young violinist Wolfgang David, accompanied by pianist Daniel Grimwood, scaled the heights of musicmaking Wednesday at the Austrian Embassy in a performance spanning the 20th century.
The Viennese composer Ernst Krenek spent a lifetime testing out every musical style in vogue at various times. Though highly individual, his music is an ironic reinvention of everything from Viennese harmonic rapture and neoclassicism to peppery jazz and the rigor of serialism. His Sonata (1944) brims over with this diversity, yet David’s incisive bow arm and vigor tempered by reflection created a unified statement of pathos.
David captured the drollery of an eccentric Erik Satie bonbon and coasted over the luminous textures and glossy surfaces of Maurice Ravel’s Sonata of 1923 and Darius Milhaud’s „Le Boeuf sur le Toit“. Yet his lustrous approach to both clarified their psychic differences, evoking Ravel’s wistful glow and defining his seamless structures, while scampering through Milhaud’s risible twists on Latin rhythmic gusto. An Ernest Bloch piece was spellbinding in its plaintiveness. Grimwood was an intense, skillful partner throughout.