Many of us do Sudoku puzzles when we’re sick and bored at home. Perhaps we’ll read a novel or watch some TV if we’re taking care of a family member. Instead, while his father was sick on a family tour, Mozart wrote his first symphony…at age eight. While the piece is more of a curiosity then a repertoire staple, the quality and compositional technique look to Mozart’s brilliant future.
This rare gem opens the upcoming BSO program at Symphony Hall, with Markus Stenz on the podium. After the symphony, mind-boggling technician and brilliant musician Frank Peter Zimmermann will play Mozart’s 2nd Violin Concerto (which he wrote at an elderly 19) and a new work by Brett Dean, and the evening wraps up with Schumann’s boisterous Symphony No. 2.
Stenz was one of the first to champion works by the composer, and former member of the Berlin Philharmonic, Brett Dean, and he brings Dean’s recent work The Lost Art of Letter Writing to Boston this coming weekend. The piece draws 
stylistically from early 20th Century modernists more than it does from contemporary composers, and even though the piece is not tonal, it features easily recognizable melodies and motifs. Its siblings are Shostakovich, Bartok, and Prokofiev, not Boulez and Carter, and the piece is an expressive tour de force in which the violinist almost never relinquishes the center stage.
Speaking of virtuosos, I will never forget Zimmermann’s performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto at Tanglewood in 2001, and every time I attend a performance of his I feel the anticipation of another legendary show.  During his last couple of appearances with the BSO, he encored with some virtuosic pyrotechnics. It’s clear when they shake their bows in the air following every performance that the orchestra members love Zimmermann’s playing. This is a virtuoso not to be missed.
 For the gather.com community: Are there any violinists out there? Who do you think is the greatest violinist of all time, and/or the greatest living violinist and why?
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Comments: 7
Of the current crop ("crop"?!), I know the marvelous work of Janine Jansen quite well from exquisite chamber music performances with Spectrum Concerts Berlin. Frank Dodge, who founded that ensemble, was a judge at a Belgian contest and heard her at about 18, and immediately invited her to Spectrum where she's been regularly ever since.
Not all notable soloists are such good group performers. Fans of Janine should search out the Spectrum Concerts Berlin cd's of Harbison, Robert Helps and Dohnanyi to hear her in action. I only wish there had been recordings of the ensemble a year ago at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, where they played two concerts. Her compatriot Lars Wouters van der Oudenweijer added the most beautiful clarinet playing I've ever heard to the Brahms Quintet. And they rendered the original string sextet of Schoenberg Verklaerte Nacht in a way I'd never heard: no dismal Victorian pathos, but a bursting out from guilt and fear into starlit love and commitment. Never liked the piece until then.
For greatest violists, I would go with William Primrose and Kim Kashkashian.
Thanks again for the great posts!