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Joshua Bell by Jeff hudson
When Joshua Bell visited the Mondavi Center in February
2011 with pianist Sam Haywood, Bell shared a few
remarks during an interview that presaged much that has
occurred during the subsequent year-and-a-half.
“I’m starting to move toward conducting,” Bell told me.
“I’ve now directed a couple of Beethoven symphonies—
the 4th and the 7th—and there are a lot of great
symphonic works I’d like to tackle and direct.”
A few weeks later (May 2011), the Academy of St. Martin
in the Fields announced that Bell would become that
orchestra’s new music director, giving Bell the opportunity
to lead performances of any number of symphonic
works (including, but not limited to, the violin concerto
repertoire). And Bell led the Academy on a 15-city
American tour in April 2012, including performances of
(you guessed it) the Beethoven 4th and Beethoven 7th, as
well as Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
It soon became clear that Bell will lead the Academy in a
manner similar to the way another violin-soloist-turnedmusic-director,
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, leads the
Bay Area’s New Century Chamber Orchestra—from the
concertmaster’s chair. As Allan Kozinn of The New York
Times put it in his review of Bell and the Academy at Avery
Fischer Hall in April, “As it turns out, the (conductor’s)
position does not actually demand that he let the fiddle
slip from his hands, let alone exchange it for a stick.” Bell
was soloist in the Beethoven Violin Concerto on that
program, “and led the orchestra standing, though as much
with his head and upper torso as with his hands (even
when he was not playing),” Kozinn wrote.
Last summer, Bell premiered a new double concerto
(violin and bass) composed by Edgar Meyer (no stranger
to the Mondavi stage) with performances at Tanglewood,
Aspen and the Hollywood Bowl.
Bell also issued a new album last January—a recital
disc titled French Impressions in partnership with pianist
Jeremy Denk. The album’s content features half of the
program that Bell and Denk performed here in Jackson
Hall in 2010: the Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano in D
Minor by Camille Saint-Saëns (Op. 75, from 1885), and the
one-and-only Violin Sonata by Maurice Ravel (1923-27).
38 | Mondavi Center Presents Program issue 3: nov 2012
further listening
The album also features Bell and Denk in the Violin Sonata
by César Franck (1886)—Franck wrote it for violinist
Eugène Ysaÿe, whose pupils included Josef Gingold; Bell
became Gingold’s pupil. In July, French Impressions picked
up the ECHO Klassik Award for Best Chamber Music
Recording (19th Century).
When Bell appears in recital, as he does tonight, he has
the admirable trait of giving his recital partners equal
billing. The French Impressions album cover include Denk’s
name in the same font and point size as Bell’s.
This is likewise the situation tonight with Bell and pianist
Sam Haywood, who is noted for his interpretations of
Chopin. Haywood lives in the Lake District in northern
England (where the pastoral scenery has influenced many
artists, including poet William Wordsworth).
Jeff Hudson contributes coverage of the
performing arts to Capital Public Radio, the
Davis Enterprise and Sacramento News and Review.
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