Promising a class act for his Denver debut, violinist Vadim Repin likens his approach to chamber music to the culinary arts.
“Creating a musical program is like preparing an interesting meal,” said the 34-year-old native of Siberia who performs Wednesday alongside Nikolai Lugansky in a Friends of Chamber Music concert at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts. “There are different courses. I try to make my programs as diversified as possible too.”
Describing a program that ranges from Béla Bartók’s trademark folk motifs to the austere air of Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres” – which Repin touts as a sorbet between courses – he notes a particular fondness for César Franck’s cyclical Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major and Franz Schubert’s Fantasia for Violin and Piano in C Major.
“Schubert was an artist like Mozart,” he said. “Not one note he wrote is just so-so. Everything has meaning.
“There is great simplicity as well as profoundness in his music, and great technical difficulty. The combination is very sweet, very touching and so beautiful.”
Repin said he and pianist Lugansky, his Russian compatriot, tour together as often as their separate performance schedules allow.
“We are both very busy, but we try to manage time for the pleasure of chamber music,” he said. “We have known each other many years, and there is a mutual respect between us. There is also friendship which is very important in chamber music.
“Chamber music means learning and growing into the music together. In that way, it’s much more personal and intimate than other kinds of performance.”
Accolades for the pair abound in the international media. Each has amassed awards and prizes; Repin won the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition that launched his career at age 17. Among Repin’s more meaningful praises is that of
Yehudi Menuhin, the late, legendary American violinist and conductor who called the young virtuoso “simply the best, the most perfect violinist I have ever heard.”
Yet Repin’s ascent to stardom, which keeps him booked with more than 100 concerts between now and the end of the year, seems almost accidental. His parents weren’t musicians, and when he was 5 he ended up learning to play the violin as a second choice to the accordion.
“I was too young to remember the moment I knew that the violin had in fact become my life,” said Repin, who plays the 1708 Stradivarius “Ruby” violin, previously played by Pablo de Sarasate, the late Spanish virtuoso and composer.
Repin, who recently signed with the Deutsche Grammophon record label, specializes in Russian and French music, as well as 20th-century and contemporary music. He is collaborating with Midori, the Japanese violin phenom, in a new music initiative called the Midori/Repin Commissioning Project.
“We chose eight composers that we really like, and commissioning donors are selecting some of them to compose short works for solo violin,” he said. “Midori will focus more on the American side of the Atlantic to promote this new music, and I will focus more on the European side, where I live.”
Repin and his Italian wife split their time between Geneva and Rome.
“Midori and I will begin performing the new pieces next season,” he said. “The best part of the project is enriching the violin repertoire with beautiful music.”
But in the same breath that Repin enthuses about the many projects that keep him trotting the globe in airplanes and on night trains, he transitions to his love of beach-lounging, tennis and – especially – skiing.
“It refreshes my mind like no other sport.”
He should feel right at home in Colorado.
Vadim Repin
FRIENDS OF CHAMBER MUSIC| Repin with Nikolai Lugansky, music for violin and piano|Gates Concert Hall, Newman Center for the Performing Arts; 2344 E. Iliff Ave.| WEDNESDAY|7:30 p.m.|SOLD OUT|303-388-9839
