Think a guy who plays second violin in a string quartet can’t wow ‘em on stage as a soloist?
Well, think again. Especially when the violinist in question is Scott St. John, a native of London, Ontario, and brother of violin virtuosa, Lara.
St. John’s regular gig is with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, currently based in California. He’s the ensemble’s second violinist, although sometimes he’ll trade spots with SLSQ first violinist Geoff Nuttall.
With the SLSQ on hiatus this month, St. John’s performance calendar opened up for some concerto work. So, St. John was in Hamilton on Saturday night for a performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra under Jamie Sommerville.
And what an extremely fine performance it was, certainly deserving of the standing ovation given afterward by the audience in Hamilton Place’s orchestra seats. Not only does St. John have technique to burn (a vital requisite for the Brahms), he made the notes tell. At times, he shaped and molded the notes, coaxing them out of his Boston made 1886 J. B. Squier violin. At other times, he was the fiery virtuoso demanded by Brahms’s bravura writing.
And speaking of bravura, Brahms, oddly enough, never wrote a cadenza for the concerto’s first movement. He left that task to his colleague, Joseph Joachim. Many others have since had a go at providing a cadenza, Max Reger and Fritz Kreisler among them.
St. John is a passionate proponent of Adolf Busch’s cadenza. Though it’s a bit shorter and finishes exactly like the Joachim cadenza, Busch’s cadenza is tautly constructed and wholly satisfying. St. John rendered it beautifully.
Beautiful too, was the manner in which HPO principal oboist Jon Peterson played the melody which opens the Adagio second movement.
In the final movement, St. John, Sommerville and company shot out of the gate. Too quickly as it turned out, for none of them could hold that tempo.
The size of the HPO string section, 34 strong on Saturday, seemed well-suited for the Brahms--you certainly don’t want the orchestra to smother the soloist.
However, extra desks of string players were needed for an extra bit of “umph” in Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony, the work which closed the first half. Minor foibles aside--some inconsistent ensemble here, a too strident trumpet there--Dvorak’s tuneful essay was given an impassioned reading by Sommerville and crew.
The same could not be said of Toronto based composer Brian Current’s Symphonies in Slanted Time, the concert’s opening work. Composed in 2005, this thirteen minute piece of ingenious claptrap is a study in shifting tempos, and leveraging noise from an orchestra. This work doesn’t depend on a conductor to shape or to mold, or to give its contents a particular “interpretation.” The players only need clear conducting signals of when to speed up or slow down, get softer or louder. Consequently, it was dispatched dispassionately by the HPO. The less said this slanted time around, the better. Alas, it was the lone item not living up to the bill’s title of Passions.
