Juliette Kang is a Korean violinist born (in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
on September 5, 1976. She is currently
the associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She began her career as a soloist but
gravitated toward a high position as an orchestral player, a choice that
possibly provides the best of both worlds since she continues to successfully
concertize as soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist. (Sometimes, orchestral players leave
orchestral work to launch solo careers but that is very rare – only Janos
Starker, Zino Francescatti, Emanuel Vardi, Pablo Casals, William Primrose, Emanuel
Vardi, Berl Senofsky, Lynn Harrell, and Tossy Spivakovsky come to mind. It is far more common for soloists to abandon
the touring life in favor of a more tranquil existence as a first-desk
orchestral player and/or teacher at a top music school.) Kang began violin lessons with James Keene
(concertmaster of the Edmonton Symphony) when she was 4 years old. Three years later, she made her debut in
Montreal. Two years after that, at age 9
(or 10), she entered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where her main
teacher was Jascha Brodsky, a well-known violin pedagogue. At Curtis, she also studied chamber music
with Felix Galimir. In 1991 (after
graduating from Curtis), she began studying at the Juilliard School in New York
under Hyo Kang and Dorothy Delay. She
was 15 years old. At 16, Kang made her
New York debut in March, 1993 at the 92nd Street Y. Between 1983 and 1994, Kang won major prizes
at several violin competitions here and abroad, including first prize at the
Yehudi Menuhin violin competition in 1992 and first prize at the Indianapolis
Violin Competition in 1994. She was 18
years old when she won the Indianapolis competition. (Among the top 60 prize winners since the Indianapolis
competition’s inception in 1982, only six or seven players have achieved
high-profile international recognition – Leonidas Kavakos, Simone Lamsma,
Clara-Jumi Kang, Sergei Khachatryan, and Augustin Hadelich.) After many solo appearances, Kang began her
orchestral career in 1999, playing with the Kennedy Center Opera
Orchestra. She was 23 years old. She then played in the first violin section
of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra from 2001 to 2003 – Raymond Gniewek had
just retired as concertmaster. From 2003
to 2005, Kang was assistant concertmaster with the Boston Symphony. In 2005, at age 29, she was appointed
associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Now, she has curtailed her solo appearances
to just three or four concerts per season.
As is customary, she also gets to be a featured soloist with her
orchestra. On her first solo appearance
with the orchestra in 2012, she played Prokofiev’s first concerto. In November of 2014 she played the Stravinsky
concerto and in January, 2018 she played Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy with the
orchestra. Her discography includes her
solo recital at Carnegie Hall and the Wieniawski and Schumann concertos with
the Vancouver Symphony. Kang plays a
Camillo Camilli violin constructed in 1730 (approximately.) I do not know whether she has or has had any
students.
Prone to Violins
About violinists, violins, and the violence that occurs between the two.
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Eda Kersey
Eda Kersey was an English violinist and teacher born
(in Goodmayes, a district of London) on May 15, 1904. She was a very accomplished musician whose
career was mostly spent in England. She
was also one of quite a few female violinists who died young – Maud Powell, Johanna
Martzy, Ginette Neveu, Edith Volkaert, Alma Rose, Alma Moodie, and Arma Senkrah
are among them. Several sources speak
very highly of her and emphasize that she would have left a great legacy if
only she had lived long enough to record the great works of the violin
repertoire. She is also known to have
stated that practicing seven hours a day (which she routinely did) should be
sufficient for any violinist. Her
musical education began on the piano at age four. She took up the violin at age six when she actually
began studying at the Trinity College of Music in London. Two years later, she was awarded a
certificate from the college with very high marks. She was eight years old. After that, she began studying with Edgar
Mouncher (a pupil of Otakar Sevcik.) After
only two years, at age ten, she played Wieniawski’s second concerto (first
movement only) in Southampton, a city which is 65 miles from London. That concert (in 1915) was a great
success. At age 13, she moved to London
to live with an aunt and uncle in London and began studying with Margaret
Holloway, a pupil of Leopold Auer. Her
first London recital took place three years later at the Aeolian Hall when she
was sixteen years old. (New York City
also had its own Aeolian Hall.) Along
the way, she premiered the concertos of Arnold Bax, Erno Dohnanyi, and Stanley
Wilson, as well as works by other contemporary composers. She also gave the first English performance
of the Barber concerto at a Proms concert in 1943. Her first Proms concert had been in 1930
playing the Beethoven concerto with the famous Henry Wood conducting. She was 26 years old. That performance was the first of several
appearances she made at the popular Proms concerts. In 1931, she formed a piano trio which was
simply named The Trio Players. Her last
concert took place in June, 1944, at the Albert Hall in London. Kersey played a Nicolo Amati, a J.B.
Vuillaume, and a Guarnerius del Gesu (which she acquired from Belgian violinist
Alfred De Reyghere in 1942), among other violins. Eda Kersey died on July 13, 1944, at age 40. Negotiations for many recordings of the
standard repertoire had nearly been concluded before her sudden death but she
never got to actually record anything other than some small pieces (with piano
accompaniment) and the Bax concerto (with orchestral accompaniment) several
months earlier.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Ayla Erduran

Sunday, November 4, 2018
David Grimal
David Grimal is a French violinist, conductor, and teacher born on
February 9, 1973. He is best known as
the Artistic Director (and Conductor) of the French group Les Dissonances. Ironically, Les Dissonances plays without a
conductor and performs challenging repertoire (such as the Rite of Spring)
which no other conductor-less orchestra would dare. Grimal leads from the first chair. Regarding Les Dissonances, Grimal has stated: “We work together in the sense of community of
mind, a gathering of very strong positive energy and joy.” Regarding the violin itself, he has said:
“What interests me is the invisible - that something which makes the dancer
take flight and causes his gesture to be eternal.” The
Dissonances musicians are from different parts of France and Europe – from various
other ensembles – almost none are permanent members. The orchestra plays in many different cities
and venues. Understandably, Grimal frequently
plays the violin concerto repertoire with this orchestra. When he does, he never actually conducts, as
all other conductor/violinists do - he just lets the orchestra play by itself
(and it is fully capable of doing so.) His
style of playing, although virtuosic and brilliant, is relaxed, unassuming, and
unpretentious. His repertoire includes
the Schumann concerto, which is now gaining in popularity. Grimal began lessons at age five but I do not
know the name of his first teacher.
First teachers are usually not famous pedagogues or even famous
violinists – sometimes they are immediate family members. At the Paris Conservatory Grimal won first
prizes in violin and chamber music at age 20 (1993.) He later studied with the enigmatic Philippe
Hirschhorn, most likely in the Netherlands, where Hirschhorn was then teaching. He also briefly studied with other violinists
after he graduated. In 1996, he received
the European Culture Prize. He was 23
years old. Needless to say, he has
played in most of the world’s great halls with high-profile conductors and
orchestras. However, other than live
recordings, his discography (on various labels) is not extensive. Nonetheless, the few studio (commercial) recordings
he has done have received national and international awards and
recognition. A great many composers have
written works for him. In 2004 Grimal
founded Les Dissonances. In 2008, he
became artist in residence at the Dijon Opera.
(Dijon is about 200 miles southeast of Paris and is the birthplace of
Rameau.) Grimal has taught at the
Advanced School of Music in Saarbrucken (Germany) for some time although I
don’t know how long he has been there.
(Saarbrucken is about 180 miles north of Dijon and 200 miles east of
Paris. It is very close to the French
border with Germany.) Additionally, he
plays at many music festivals around Europe and has frequently held
masterclasses wherever he performs. His
violin is the Roederer Stradivarius from 1710, previously owned by Turkish
violinist Ayla Erduran. He also plays a
modern violin made for him by French luthier Jacques Fustier. You can listen to the finale from Brahms’
Third Symphony here. Here is Grimal
playing Mozart’s fifth concerto – first movement.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Valery Klimov
Valery Klimov (Valeri Alexandrovich Klimov) is
a Russian violinist and teacher born (in Kiev) on October 16, 1931. He is known for having won the very first
International Tchaikovsky Violin Competition (in March, 1958), the best known violin
competition in the world. He was 26
years old. That was the same competition
at which Van Cliburn (the American piano player) won first prize in the piano
division, subsequently becoming popular and famous. That year, Russian composer Dmitri
Shostakovich was the chairman. Klimov’s
first teacher was his father. He later
studied at the Odessa Conservatory and later still at the Moscow Conservatory
with David Oistrakh. As far as I was
able to determine, Klimov did not perform outside Russia until 1967. Quite possibly his first concert outside the
Soviet Union was in London, England. Although
he has toured around the world, his career has mostly been spent in
Russia. He has been teaching at the
Moscow Conservatory for a long time and has received many official awards. Among his many pupils are Elena Denisova,
Hisaya Sato, Alice Waten, Fiona Ziegler, Evgeny Grach, Rachel Schmidt, and
Alena Tsoi. Here is a YouTube video with
Klimov playing the Khachaturian concerto.
Among other things, it gives you a chance to hear the excellent
acoustics of the Sydney Opera House.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Mayu Kishima
Mayu Kishima is a Japanese violinist born (in Kobe,
Japan) on December 13, 1986. She is
known for having won one of the largest (if not the largest) monetary prizes in
a violin competition – the Isaac Stern Violin Competition in Shanghai awarded
her a first prize of $100,000 in 2016.
That was a competition that she almost decided not to enter until the
last minute. Kishima began her violin
studies in Tokyo at age 3 and has had quite a number of teachers during her
career, including Izumi Hayashi, Kazuyo Togami,
Toshiya Eto, Dorothy DeLay, Masao Kawasaki, Machi Oguri, Chihiro Kudo,
and Zakhar Bron (with whom she began studying at age 13.) She graduated from the Advanced School for
Music in Cologne in 2012. She was 26
years old. By then however, she had
already established herself as a concert artist, having begun her professional
career in the year 2000 at age 14. Kishima
made her first studio recording in 2003 with the NHK Symphony. Needless to say, she has played all over the
world with some of the finest orchestras and conductors. Among the violins she has played are a 1779
G.B. Guadagnini and a Stradivarius from 1700.
Here is one of many YouTube videos posted of her performances. Here is another.
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Marianna Vasileva
Marianna Vasileva (Marianna Vasilyeva, Marianna
Wasiljewa) Is a Russian violinist and teacher born (in St Petersburg) on
November 25, 1986. In addition to a
fantastic technique and a very expressive style of playing, she is known for
performing all 24 Caprices by Paganini in a single recital – currently,
probably the only female violinist to do so.
As far as I know, she has not recorded the famous Caprices but probably
will in the near future. (The first
female to record all 24 Caprices is Bulgarian violinist Vanya Milanova, back in
1985.) Vasileva began her violin studies
at age five with her father, a professional violinist. She has stated that even at that tender age
she practiced several hours a day. Her
first accompanist was her mother, a professional pianist, with whom she has
performed in recital many times. At age
7, she began her studies at the St Petersburg Conservatory’s School for Gifted
Children with an obscure teacher named Vladimir Ovcharek. At age 11, she began studying with Dora
Schwarzberg at the Advanced School for Music in Vienna. At age 17 she began studying with Zakhar Bron
at the Advanced School for Music and Dance in Cologne. During all those years, she was also
(simultaneously) studying at the St Petersburg Conservatory. (The St Petersburg Conservatory is where the
famous Leopold Auer taught for many years.)
Her performing career actually began at age 8, when she played in public
for the first time. At age 10, she made
her formal debut in Russia and Germany playing the first concerto (the one in g
minor) by Max Bruch. In that year, she
also won her first violin competition in Russia. In 2001, she actually won a violin in the
International Spohr Violin Competition – I don’t know what violin it was but
I’m certain it was a high quality instrument.
She was 15 years old. In 2009,
she won first prize in the International Competition for Young Violinists in
honor of Karol Lipinski and Henryk Wieniawski in Lublin, Poland (not to be
confused with the well-known Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition held in
Poznan, Poland, every five years.) She
was 23 years old. In 2010 she won first
prize in the Prague Spring International Music Competition. She currently teaches at the Music Academy in
Madrid, in addition to teaching masterclasses around the world, as so many
other soloists do. Her
concert tours span the entire world and she has played in almost all of the
important musical venues and concert halls. Her repertoire is very extensive although her discography is still quite small. I
know Vasileva has played a Guarneri Del Gesu violin from 1724 and a 1752 Carlo
Antonio Testore violin on many concerts but I don’t know if those are her
current instruments – I will try to find out and post it as a comment below. Vasileva is fluent in four languages;
Russian, English, German, and Hebrew. Here
is a YouTube video where she plays a well-known piece by Tchaikovsky. Here is a sound file where she plays the
seldom-heard Ysaye sonata for two violins – the other violinist is Dmitri
Kogan, grandson of the great Leonid Kogan.
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