My new CD is now out! It's called Histoire du Tango and you can find it on Amazon and iTunes. 

It's an exploration of music for violin and guitar that starts off with Ástor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango, a four-movement work that traces the development of the tango from the brothels of Buenos Aires around 1900, to the cafés of the 1930s and nightclubs of the 1960s, to the stylized art form played in concert halls today. Next are transcriptions of the Canciones Populares Españolas by Manuel de Falla and two works by Nicolò Paganini: the Sonata Concertata and the fiendishly difficult Moses Fantasy, a work played entirely on the G string (the violin's lowest string). (Legend has it that Paganini would often play this work at the end of concerts once his other three strings had broken!) Pablo de Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) finishes the program.



I recorded this album with the brilliant guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas, whom I first met in 2009. I immediately loved the sound of our two instruments together, and was struck by how rarely violin and guitar are heard together on stage and recording, even though the combination is found in so many popular music settings (like tango and gypsy bands).
Click here to view a short video clip on YouTube, where we talk about the album and play one of the movements of the Piazzolla.

I just finished a series of performances of the Brahms concerto - in Denver, Memphis, Buffalo and Tampere (Finland). It's amazing how different and new this piece feels every time as I play it with different people. Next up I'm playing Paganini's first violin concerto with Saint Louis Symphony and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Paganini's music is dismissed by many as mainly technical, but the first thing I think when I think of this piece is opera: it's written in the lyrical, highly expressive style of the bel canto tradition…with some virtuosic episodes thrown in. It’s music that should melt your heart before it dazzles you. One of my first teachers, the Italian violinist Uto Ughi (with whom I studied in Siena from age 8 to 11) understood this, and his approach to this concerto has always been a great inspiration to me. I love Paganini's sense of humor too, and it's essential to bring that out, despite how hard the piece is technically. A few years ago, I wrote a cadenza for it (link), in which I try to emphasize the fun side of the piece.

My new, redesigned website is finished! It was designed (like the previous one) by the brilliant Balázs Böröcz from Pilvax Studio!

I just returned from Toronto, where I played Mozart's fourth concerto, coupled with the virtuosic Rondo from the "Haffner"-Serenade, with Peter Oundjian conducting. Every collaboration with him is like chamber music, and I feel like he knows what I'm going to do before even I know it!
This week I'm playing Mozart's 5th concerto in my Dallas Symphony debut with Jaap van Zweden.
Is it possible to have a favorite Mozart violin concerto? Luckily, I don't have to pick a favorite, and get to play both two weeks in a row!

Overall, the 5th concerto is flashier and more extroverted, while the 4th concerto is more intimate and elegant. When it comes to the slow movements, I feel that the concertos 3, 4 and 5 are tied, and one is more beautiful than the other. The beauty of the Andante of the 4th concerto lies in its simplicity - the music is so pure, and communicates something that is impossible to put into words. Already as a child, I loved playing this movement.

The slow movement of the 5th is also very beautiful but it is more the kind of beauty one finds in Beethoven - the beauty of something carefully constructed, refined to perfection. In Beethovenian manner, Mozart had discarded his original slow movement (which is now known as the Adagio in E Major) and replaced it with this new Adagio. I love how the meter of the first theme seems to shift, keeping the listener guessing where the bar lines are, and there is a gently rocking feeling to much of this movement.

Mozart liked to insert folk tunes in the Rondo movements of his concertos. In the case of the 4th, one of the interludes is a rustic Gavotte with a musette (a bagpipe imitation), which remains very funny even today. The last movement of the fifth concerto contains a "Turkish" episode - for a moment, it sounds as if we're in the middle of the abduction from the seraglio! Of course, it's Turkish folk music as heard through the ears of an Austrian 18th century composer, and quite different from how somebody like Bartók would have written it down!
 

Fantastic news! I'm filling in (three days notice) for Nikolaj Znaider with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert at the "Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival" in Colorado - I'm playing the Mendelssohn concerto (link). This is unbelievably exciting for me, since it's my New York Philharmonic debut - I can't wait!
The last few weeks were very stimulating and fun. I was playing at the Seattle Chamber Music Society, which was just as great an experience as it was last year. One of the highlights was playing the Schubert string quintet with an incredible cast of players led by James Ehnes last friday!
I also have another youtube video out - this time of the Schumann violin sonata from my recital at Town Hall in April (link).

I'm back from Seattle, where I played three really great works of music: first up was Shostakovich's powerful string quartet no. 8 (with Stefan Jackiw, Richard O'Neill and Edward Arron, a very satisfying performance), then the Schubert Duo in A Major, and Beethoven's quartet Op. 59/3. The previous week I played the Brahms concerto at the Chautauqua Festival in up-state New York. This is where I played my first concert in the United States in 2001, nine years ago!
My debut with the New York Philharmonic in Vail on July 24 was a success, and was definitely one of the highlights of 2010, and of my career in general. I was also extremely happy about a review that came out in the Denver Post (link).
 
As the next Indianapolis competition draws near (it takes place September 10-26), the time has come to say goodbye to the Ex-Gingold Stradivari, which I've been playing since October 2006. I have learned a lot from playing this violin, and we've been through so much together! It's sad to give it back - I hope that the next violinist to play it will enjoy it as much as I did.
 
The great news is that I have been loaned a beautiful 1723 Stradivari violin (from the so-called "golden period") - the "Ex-Kiesewetter". I have it on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison, through the Stradivari Society of Chicago. It had been a long search, and I am incredibly grateful for the loan of this instrument.
Switching instruments is only fun if you like what you're switching to, and this one is very special, with a very beautiful and strong sound. They were made 40 years apart from each other, and are both extremely different and very similar at the same time. I can already tell that I will love exploring this violin's colors and nuances.
 

I just returned from Karlsruhe, where I played the Brahms concerto with my friend Justin Brown - once again, it was absolutely wonderful to play with him. One of the nice things about our collaborations, is that it sounds better and better with every rehearsal and concert - the last concert we gave yesterday was incredibly satisfying and I felt like the piece came to life the way I wanted it to. Sometimes, when the chemistry between violinist and conductor isn't right, it can be the opposite: the first rehearsals are quite exciting, and then it becomes more stale and unnatural with each further time we play it.
This was just after another good collaboration on the Brahms in Phoenix with Michael Christie, and a recital in Indianapolis in-between the semi-final and final rounds of the new competition, which just finished. I was extremely impressed with the playing of all the laureates and many other contestants this year. All the performances are up for video-streaming on www.violin.org by the way.
It was nice and strange at the same time for me to be there once again, but this time as a spectator. I had flashbacks waiting for results and to the anxiety and pressure that I had felt when I competed four years ago. I am so happy that I never have to go through that again!
I also thought about how much has happened during the last four years, and all the concerts I've played, places I've been to and repertoire I've learned since. While it's not fun to be judged against your friends and colleagues, the Indianapolis competition does open a lot of doors and jump-started my career. Indianapolis will always have a place in my heart!
I played the recital with Rohan De Silva (who had been my pianist four years ago), and the entire jury and many of the contestants came to it. How scary, to play in front of so many brilliant and critical violinists! As Jaime Laredo joked to me afterwards, "this is the toughest audience you'll ever play for".
 
Before Phoenix I played Sibelius in Reno (my first Sibelius in 4 years) and Beethoven in Indianapolis. Tomorrow I fly to Columbus, OH to play Beethoven with Günther Herbig. After that, I'm off to New Orleans to play the Alban Berg concerto and Haydn concerto in C with Carlos Miguel Prieto. It will be my first Berg concerto actually, and I can't wait. All together, it will have been three Beehoven performances, five Brahms, two Sibelius, one Berg and one Haydn as well as one full-length recital, and all of that in exactly 30 days!
 

I'm in Houston this week, playing Chausson Poème and Ravel Tzigane, with Hans Graf. It's one of the highlights of my season (my subscription debut in Houston actually), and I love playing the two pieces together in this pairing. It's actually my first time performing the Ravel with orchestra - I've often performed the earlier version of the work for violin and piano. At first I thought that playing it with orchestra would mean that I couldn't be as flexible rythmically, but it actually turned out to not be a problem, because it's orchestrated so intelligently. Ravel was a masterful orchestrator, and I'm really enjoying the amazing colors that the orchestra version brings to the piece.
The review of the first concert is here (link)
 
My next CD (with Robert Kulek) will be released on iTunes in December! The program is Poulenc sonata, Stravinsky Suite after Pergolesi, Debussy sonata, and Prokofiev sonata no 2. Making a CD is pretty exhausting; playing in the recording session is actually the easiest part! It's having to listen through everything afterwards looking for the best takes, the long editing process, writing the liner notes, and worst of all, the proof-reading that is really tedious. But it's finally done; Balázs from Pilvax Studio (who also made this website) designed a beautiful booklet for the CD, using photos of me and Robert that he took in Paris when we were there in April.
I decided to call the CD "echoes of Paris". (It's actually hard to come up with a title with the word "Paris" in it that is not totally corny!) Each of these four composers spent many years living in Paris, and I speculate in the booklet that maybe the reason that these pieces fit so well together on a program is because of how that city and its artistic milieu influenced their styles. The neo-classical Stravinsky and the Debussy sonata were written within a few years from one another, and both these composers influenced Poulenc greatly (and you can really hear that in his violin sonata). The Prokofiev is not an early work, but is also rather neo-classical in style, and is extremely compatible with the other pieces.
 
I've been rewriting my cadenzas for Mozart 4, which I'm playing with the Iris chamber orchestra in two weeks. I decided to start over because I had composed myself into a corner, and was completely stuck. I'm much happier now, but you don't know whether a cadenza works until you perform it in the context of the concerto.

I just returned from visiting my parents in Italy, where I spent a relaxing ten days. It's so good to have a break! Before that, I played the Dvorak concerto in Saarbrücken, Germany, which was a very special concert for me. The conductor, Christoph Poppen, was actually one of my first violin teachers when I was eight years old, and because of that we have a special chemistry and understanding between us. The concert was also filmed and broadcast on the the SWR3 German television channel (where it aired last week). In a production like this, the dress rehearsal is usually filmed as well, and during the rehearsal we had to bow in front of the empty hall as though there were people sitting there! The whole thing was a thrilling experience, and maybe the most fun I've had with the Dvorak concerto so far.
 
My new CD of violin-piano works by Poulenc, Stravinsky, Debussy and Prokofiev is now available for download on iTunes and Amazon mp3. It's called 'Echoes of Paris'. The non-digital, physical, plastic, old-fashioned CD will be released on February 8 :)
If you buy it on iTunes, you also get the booklet as a pdf download with it, so head over there and check it out!
 
I added my new cadenza  for Mozart no. 4 to the about/cadenzas section of the site, and revised some of the others, correcting mistakes and putting in a few additional markings. I want to make them user-friendly if anybody wants to check them out, but don't want to make the mistake of writing too many instructions (pulling an 'Ysaÿe', you might say). How somebody plays the cadenza depends entirely on the approach that they have for the work the cadenza fits into. So I often wrote the slurs and articulation exactly the way they are written in the corresponding parts in the concerto.
 
I'm about to go off on an intense series of concerts. First up, Brahms double concerto with my friend Alban Gerhardt. I know this is going to be fun!