I remember being blown away by Cho-Liang Lin when I heard him perform at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in July. So I wasn’t surprised to be wowed again by the soulful Taiwanese-American violinist at Wednesday night’s Friends of Chamber Music recital at Gates Concert Hall.
A highlight of the sold-out event that also featured veteran pianist André-Michel Schub was Three Fantasies for Violin and Piano by Chinese composer Bright Sheng whose classical style grew out of his country’s Cultural Revolution.
In the set of separate but related pieces, the duo captured an air of improvisation in “Dream Song,” sometimes traveling together in parallel, sometimes in complementary converse motion. The abrasive, angry motifs of the contrasting “Tibetan Air” provided an ideal canvas for Schub’s arguably angular musical manner, while Cho-Liang Lin shone in a luminous, poignant reading of Sheng’s “Kazakh stan Love Song.”
Opening both halves of the program were works by Mozart. In his Sonata No. 23 in D Major, the two virtuosos immediately proved their compatibility in technical fluency and pacing. Throughout the sunny work, however, Schub’s emotional output paled somewhat alongside Cho-Liang Lin’s inborn, nuanced expressiveness.
The large-scale, three-movement sonata seems to probe every ingredient of joy – from bold gestures and high spirits to lyricism and surprising tempo fluctuations – whereas the composer’s Sonata No. 27 in G Major, performed after intermission, reads more like an experiment to achieve greater equality in the roles of the two instruments. In both works, the duo surmounted the dominant challenge of most Mozart scores, namely an unflinching transparency where every note, every rest and every phrase is exposed and vulnerable. Schub and Cho-Liang Lin consistently landed each such burst of elation and measure of quiet contemplation.
Also included on the program was a rarely performed sonata by William Walton. Cho-Liang Lin’s supple reading of the seven variations that make up the second movement was especially enjoyable, engaging the listener in an escalation of playful themes that culminate in a vigorous coda.
The encore to the wholly satisfying program was the twosome’s ardent reading of Maurice Ravel’s sultry “Habanera.”
