Sarah Chang Returns

	Violinist Sarah Chang has released a new album featuring the Brahms and Bruch violin concerti and will play sonatas by Brahms in a recital tour across the country in December. / Courtesy of EMI Classics

After foraying into Baroque music two years ago, violin virtuoso Sarah Chang is back with Brahms and Bruch.

In addition to releasing her 18th album (``Brahms & Bruch Violin Concertos,'' EMI Classics), the Korean-American artist will give a recital tour here for the first time in 10 years throughout the month of December.

Her latest recording features formidable violin concertos by Brahms (D major, Op. 77), and Bruch in (G minor, Op. 26), which are considered to be among the Big Five violin concertos alongside those of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn. The two Germans were not only contemporaries of the Romantic Viennese music scene but they both wrote the pieces with violinist Joseph Joachim in mind.

Considering the monumental scale of each piece, violinists most often tackle the pieces in two separate albums. But the former child prodigy shows that she can straddle two roads at once. That said, the album is like a meal table with two weighty entrees. Albeit a very satisfying and filling, it is advised that listeners savor each with a break.

The album highlights the 28-year-old's musical development, since she had long been acquainted with the Bruch (for 20 years) while Brahms was a more recent endeavor.

The project brings together Maestro Kurt Masur, whom the violinist considers to be her ``musical godfather'' and the esteemed Dresden Philharmonic. Chang had been working with Masur since she was 10 and started begging him to play the Brahms concerto since she was 18, she said in a statement. But she had to wait two years before he allowed her to.

The Irish Times praised her February performance of the piece as having ``a flawless delivery, deep musical intelligence and barely contained expressive exuberance.''

The Bruch concerto, on the other hand, is the very piece Chang played when she was five-and-a-half for her audition to enter the Juilliard School. In the record she articulates a pure, red-blooded Romanticism that feels intensely alive.

In her upcoming recitals, Chang will be accompanied by pianist Andrew Von Oeyen for violin sonatas by Brahms (D minor, Op. 108) and Frank (A major), among other pieces.

She will kick off the tour Dec. 11 at Ansan Culture & Arts Center and continue the following day at Daejeon Art Center; Dec. 14 at Sungsan Art Hall, Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province; Dec. 17 at Gyeonggi Arts Center, Suwon, Gyeonggi Province; Dec. 19 at Sori Arts Center of Jeollabuk-do, Jeonju, North Jeolla Province; Dec. 21 at Gwangju Culture & Art Center; Dec. 22 at Gumi Art Center; Dec. 24 at Uijeongbu Arts Center, Gyeonggi Province; Dec. 26 at Jeju Culture & Art Center, Jeju Island; and finally Dec. 28 at Seoul Arts Center. Call (02) 541-6237.

hyowlee@koreatimes.co.kr


[The koreatimes]11-10-2009 17:05/By Lee Hyo-won Staff Reporter