CD Review (The Straits Times, February 2017)

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS / ELGAR

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

PINCHAS ZUKERMAN, Violin & Conductor

Decca 478 9386 / *****

Lovers of string music should not miss this excellent album which brings together the best-loved string works of two English masters, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) and Edward Elgar (1857-1934). 

American violinist Pinchas Zukerman plays the role of both soloist and conductor. His svelte and sweet tone is best heard in Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, a single-movement violin concerto all but in name. Its use of modal themes relives the hallowed tradition of English folk music, continuing into the Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis, where three string choirs are employed to resonant effect. Here is a cathedral of sound, and a nod to the great English choral tradition.

Elgar is represented by his ubiquitous Salut D'Amour, once again with Zukerman doing the honours. The strings players of the London-based Royal Philharmonic are excellent in the three-movement Serenade For Strings, and shorter pieces Chanson De Matin, Chanson De Nuit and In Moonlight (with Zukerman now on viola), extracted from the tone poem In The South. 

This splendid album is completed by the virtuosic Introduction and Allegro, which highlights a string quartet amid a full body of strings. A feast of glorious strings beckons.   

THE ART OF AUTOGRAPHS (Part 2)

Mikhail Pletnev's near-illegible scrawl

Windows to the soul?

So what do artists’ autographs look like? They range from grandiloquent sweeps (Evelyn Glennie, Carlo Curley), beautiful cursives (Barry Tuckwell, Angela Hewitt, Anne Sophie Mutter), illegible claw-like scratches (Ivo Pogorelich, Mikhail Pletnev), to the very basic writing of one’s name (Seow Yit Kin, Marc-André Hamelin, Ronald Stevenson).

Krystian Zimerman (above) signs only with green ink, while Yo-Yo Ma uses two different styles, including one in Chinese characters. The French-American pianist Joel-François Thiollier always includes an aphorism or wisecrack, crafted on the spur of the moment.

A collage of autographs (from L):

Pinchas Zukerman, Marc Neikrug's 

hieroglyphics, David Finckel's reverse check 

and Oscar Shumsky's yin-yang

One of the most unusual specimens comes from the late American violinist Oscar Shumsky, which looks like the yin yang symbol – an S inscribed within the confines of an O (OS for his name, get it?). Other intriguing ones belong to pianist Marc Neikrug - which looks like some ancient script - and cellist David Finckel (of the Emerson Quartet), which comprises merely the Nike check and a dot. “Just done it!” it seems to proclaim.

Do these autographs reflect their owners’ personalities or characters? I am not a graphologist but I would like to think that something in an artist’s psyche comes through in their handwriting besides their music. SSO Music Director Lan Shui’s autograph is slick and stylised, just like his conducting. Russian maestros Mstislav Rostropovich (above), Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Vladimir Ashkenazy (below) all sign their multi-syllabic surnames in full – displaying a certain pride in their heritage.

Local composer Tan Chan Boon’s resembles an alpine peak, mirroring the loftiness of his Bruckner-like symphonies. Arch virtuosos like Arcadi Volodos and Peter Donohoe, who simply refuse to do autographs (a gesture of contempt for the very people who support their careers), probably suffer from some hidden inferiority complexes.