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CHO-LIANG LIN
Critical acclaim for artist
"Frequent guest violinist Cho-Liang Lin was marvelous in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor. The
four-movement work is a huge challenge to a violinist not only because it demands great stamina and technical
brilliance over 40 minutes, but also for its great emotional range.
The violinist makes a journey from a sad thoughtfulness underpinned with anger in the first movement to the
second movement’s bold, harsh, in your face mad dance. The third movement’s soaring loveliness is followed by
a huge cadenza that builds feverishly to drive into the finale’s wild ride."
Daily Gazette
“Ultimately, it is the version by Cho-Liang Lin and Esa-Pekka Salonen that is our choice for the best modern
recording. Miraculous from the soloist's first note, this version was awarded first place by all voters and on all
counts, as well a number of intriguingly contradictory qualities: "Clear and engaged" (BD), "sober and brilliant"
(PV), "sophisticated and open" (FM). His mastery of technique and sonorities is dazzling, stunning, amazing but
never for demonstration's sake. "Poetic, engaged", always "refined and well bred", the American violinist wins
our admiration without reserve. Esa-Pekka Salonen also. For the first of his four versions, the Finnish conductor
was unusually convincing, preserving the mysteries of the music without obscuring any of Sibelius's rich
orchestration. As they say, to give into the music without giving in completely, it's the secret of the greatest
artists.”
Classica, November 2010
Barber violin concerto
“...there’s truth and beauty to his playing. He radiates integrity and affection.”
The Dallas Morning News
Bartok VIOLIN CONCERTOS 1 & 2
“Lin’s technique is magnificent, his intonation immaculate, with a glittering top, breadth and radiance below. His
playing is so seemingly effortless that one can disregard technical matters and simply dwell on the musicianship.”
The Buffalo News
Beethoven VIOLIN CONCERTO
“Soloist Cho-Liang Lin produced a pure tone, playing the music brilliantly, lyrically and with a sense of its stately
beauty.”
Houston Post
Berg VIOLIN CONCERTO
“Lin handled the daunting multiple stops and passage work with a combination of finesse and rough, get-down-tobusiness brusqueness that was awesome.”
St. Petersberg Times
Bernstein SERENADE
“Lin is a natural colorist with a beautiful tone and heightened sensitivity for long lines that sit rapt at high
register”
Vancouver Sun
Brahms VIOLIN CONCERTO
“Lin approached many passages with a chamber intimacy, producing a rich, warm tone in the middle and lower
registers… The cadenza was revelatory.”
The Buffalo News
Elgar VIOLIN CONCERTO
“Cho-Liang Lin has a sumptuous, lush sound well-suited to the Romantic nature of the work”
The Strad
Mozart VIOLIN CONCERTOS 1–5
“Lin was the highlight of the evening, with his silky violin tone, endless legato and tender, soulful, introspective
Adagio movement [of Mozart Violin Concerto No. 3]...” Newark Star-Ledger
Nielsen VIOLIN CONCERTO
“elegant, incisive and technically brilliant”
“His playing consistently engages the attention, because of his sweet, strong sound, his tremendous attention to
artistic detail and his total mastery of the concerto.”
The Seattle Times
Prokofiev CONCERTOS 1 & 2
“His playing of Prokofiev’s First Concerto was sunny, assured and elegant. His intonation is superb, his musical
instincts both naturally appealing and highly cultivated.”
The Boston Globe
Rouse VIOLIN CONCERTO (1991)
“The work is a showpiece for a virtuoso, and Cho-Liang Lin took full advantage. He squeezed as much passion
as he could into the slow, wandering melody of the first movement and was dazzling in the cadenza.”
The New York Times
“The Violin Concerto (1991) was purpose-built for Cho-Liang Lin, a superb player...”
Gramophone
Stravinsky VIOLIN CONCERTO
“The violinist cut through the most bristling difficulties like a hot knife through butter.”
The Miami Herald
“[a] rare combination of virtuosity and humanity...”
The Los Angeles Times
Tan Dun “OUT OF PEKING OPERA” CONCERTO
“with the remarkable Cho-Liang Lin as soloist rediscovering in Dun’s imitations of the traditional Chinese fiddle,
the performance has an intensity and magic that stays in the mind long after it is over.”
Gramophone
Tchaikovsky VIOLIN CONCERTO
“At expansive yet highly flexible tempos, and with painstakingly sculpted phrasing, Lin honored the composer’s
musical architecture as much as his singing line, setting some breathtakingly played upper-string melodies against
a throaty earthiness in the lower strings.”
The Washington Post
Tsontakis VIOLIN CONCERTO
“performed with beautiful devotion by soloist Cho-Liang Lin, showed it can more than hold its own in the
romantic department.”
The Oregonian
Vivaldi “Four seasons”
“Lin has always been a violinist to admire. He isn’t a flashy showoff, but you know that whatever he plays will
be musically sound, technically secure and completely honest. His tone has a lot of energy and life; in the
baroque repertoire, his ornamentation complements the music without making it fussy.”
“It’s good to hear life and spontaneity breathed into this well-worn classic.”
The Seattle Times
CHO-LIANG LIN
Cincinnati Enquirer • September 4, 2015
Flashy solos, unusual program wrap up Summermusik
BY JANELLE GELFAND
Nothing about the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s concert on Thursday night was predictable – from the rarely heard
music on Kelly Kuo’s program, to the two virtuosos on violin and bass who brought down the house playing music by
Bottesini, the “Paganini of the double bass.”
The Chamber Orchestra wrapped up its first-ever experiment, a three-week Summermusik festival, with its final
concert in Corbett Theater at the School for Creative and Performing Arts. The festival mix – traditional concerts
alternating with music in bars and alternative venues – has been embraced by audiences, who promptly sold out the
smaller venues and thronged by the hundreds to the four larger concerts.
For the finale, Kuo, who is both interim music director and a finalist for the job, programmed an intriguing menu that
opened with Rameau’s Dance Suite from the Baroque opera “Les Boreades,” and included Witold Lutoslawski’s “Little
Suite” of 1950.
In between were riveting performances by two outstanding artists: The celebrated violinist Cho-Liang Lin and a young
wizard of the double bass, DaXun Zhang.
It’s always a treat to hear Lin, whose three-decade career has won accolades on multiple continents. In the first half, he
was soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto Nov. 4 in D Major, K. 218. From his first notes, one was struck by the big,
breathtaking sonority of his 1715 Stradivarius, “Titian.”
You could only marvel at the ease and perfection of his playing, as he dispatched technical feats with stunning
intonation, without breaking a sweat. But also, there was his musicality. He performed the cadenzas with flair, as if he
were inventing them on the spot. His phrasing was nuanced, up to the highest, pinpoint harmonic of his instrument.
In the concerto’s slow movement, he brought emotion to Mozart’s lyrical phrases – making the violin sing. Kuo and the
orchestra were sensitive partners.
In the second half, Lin took center stage again with Zhang, in Giovanni Bottesini’s virtuoso showpiece, Gran Duo
Concertante for violin and bass, of 1880. Zhang, a native of Harbin, China, studied at Indiana University and is now
associate professor at the University of Texas, Austin.
The composer wrote some 14 operas (and conducted the premiere of “Aida,” too). So it was easy to hear the operatic
influence. Each instrument was given extravagant cadenzas and recitatives in the ultimate display of one-upsmanship.
And what a show it was. There were musical fireworks from the start, as each soloist conversed in this astounding
dialogue. Zhang’s facility was unlike that of any bassist I have ever seen. His tone was surprisingly smooth and
Cho-Liang Lin
Cincinnati Enquirer • September 4, 2015
page 2 of 2
nuanced as he tossed off amazing feats, from trills and glissandos to playing in the stratosphere – as high as any bassist
can possibly play.
Lin, too, navigated the full range of possibilities on his violin, as he soared through one tune after another, always with
immense beauty of tone. The two communicated with split-second precision, delivering a show-stopping performance.
Kuo was with them every inch of the way, in this eclectic, fun piece. The crowd was ecstatic.
For an encore, Zhang wowed again with a soulful Mongolian piece, “Two Horses.”
Kuo has produced several inventive programs for this festival. It was refreshing to hear the under-appreciated JeanPhilippe Rameau represented by his Suite from Les Boreades, basically a string of dances. Kuo was a vigorous leader,
and the sound was vibrant. I only wished that the dances had been lighter, with more attention to Baroque style.
Lutoslawski’s “Mala suita” (Little Suite) was also an unexpected gem. Based on Polish folk tunes, the four-movement
suite was originally written for radio.
Kuo captured the varied moods of each piece in this engaging reading. The highlight was the slow “Piosenka” (Song),
with its haunting theme in the clarinet (John Kurokawa), and touches in the winds that recalled Stravinsky’s “Rite of
Spring.” Kuo brought the movement to a stirring climax before it died away.
He is a leader of exceptional musical gifts, who has a clear technique on the podium and an impressive rapport with
audiences. As has been the case all season, the musicians performed exceedingly well for him.
The concert was also unusual because it was the official audition for Kuo, who is one of five candidates for music
director of the 32-piece ensemble. The audience was invited to “rate” his performance. You’ll have to wait for next
summer to rate the other four finalists.
CHO-LIANG LIN
LA Weekly • March 31, 2014
A Concert With Five Stradivariuses
BY CHRISTIAN HERTZOG
Is there any instrument in classical music with more mystique than a violin made by Antonio Stradivari? Sherlock
Holmes owned and played one. A critically well-received film, The Red Violin, was inspired by a Strad. The recent
story of a Milwaukee violinist tazed and robbed of a Stradivarius startled and intrigued music lovers around the world.
Friday evening at The Broad Stage, as Chee-Yun played a Stradivarius, the hall literally shook. Despite the poetry and
magic of a lovely, petite violinist making a building quiver with her Strad, the real explanation was rather mundane: a
distant earthquake.
That gap between the mystical and the prosaic shadowed four days of events that the L.A. Chamber Orchestra billed as
Strad Fest L.A. On Friday's concert, five superb violinists - Margaret Batjer, Chee-Yun, Cho-Liang Lin, Philippe Quint,
and Xiang Yu - showcased five Stradivariuses.
There was a circus-like atmosphere, with the Strads trotted out like trained ponies. In two works, movements were
broken up between different violinists, the classical music equivalent of a battle royal; yet only an irredeemable cynic
would not have enjoyed the outstanding performances and the beautiful, singing violin tones.
How much of this musical magic was due to the performers, and how much to their special instruments? Many listener
blind tests between a Stradivarius and a more recently made instrument reveal no audible difference. Violinists assert
that a Stradivarius will not impart a wondrous sound to a player that can't produce one; instead, a Strad is simply easier
to play.
The program mixed solid compositions with shamelessly flashy showstoppers, with the second half devoted to music
with folk or popular influences. Yu played the fourth movement of Franck's Violin Sonata with lyric tone and musical
warmth.
Quint dazzlingly played two variations on the main theme from John Corigliano's score to The Red Violin. Telemann's
Concerto in D major, TWV 40:202, was a real find: a handsome vehicle for four violins without additional
accompaniment. Themes passed from one violin to the next, moving across the stage, energetically performed by Lin,
Chee-Yun, Quint, and Batjer.
There was jaw-dropping virtuosity from Lin in Fritz Kreisler's Tambourin Chinois, but the orientalisms are dated in this
age of world music fusion. Sarasate's Navarra, charmingly executed by Chee-Yun and Quint, successfully captured an
ethnic feel (that of Spain), but seemed little more than a virtuosic character piece.
Lin gave a haunting rendition of Ravel's Piece en Forme de Habanera, a short but profound work drenched in Spanish
atmosphere without quoting any actual folk music. Chee-Yun's masterly account of Saint-Saens' Introduction and
Rondo Capriccioso was the piece with accidental temblor accompaniment, another Spanish-infused work.
Cho-Liang Lin
LA Weekly • March 31, 2014
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Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances, composed for piano solo in 1915, are precursors to the plethora of music today
adapting folk music to the concert stage. The Transylvanian melodies are authentic, but harmonized in Bartok's unique
language. There's nothing virtuosic about the original piano version, but Zoltan Szekely arranged the work for violin
and piano with all kinds of violin tricks. All five violinists and Stradivariuses took the stage, each musician playing one
dance, with all joining in on the fast and furious last dance. Like much of the concert, this had the risk of devolving into
a silly stunt, yet the spirited playing was so wonderful that it overrode any such questions of taste.
Throughout the concert, pianist Jeffrey Kahane provided virtuosic accompaniment to the soloists with an ease and
grace that belied the technical difficulties of his part.
CHO-LIANG LIN
The Wall Street Journal • March 31, 2014
Celebrating the Stradivarius
BY DAVID MERMELSTEIN
The prized string instruments made by Antonio Stradivari are rarely out of the news. Already this year, music lovers
felt a collective shudder on learning that the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra was relieved of his
1715 Stradivarius in a mugging shortly after a performance. (Happily, the fiddle was recovered in good condition and
the alleged thieves apprehended about a week after the incident.) And now we're facing the news that one of
Stradivari's few violas, from 1719, will soon be on the auction block at Sotheby's with an asking price starting at an
unprecedented $45 million. The cost of these instruments—many more than 300 years old—has long far outpaced
inflation. But until recently, successful artists could still afford to buy one if they scrimped and saved. Those days may
be gone, however. In 2002, Joshua Bell, perhaps the most famous classical violinist of our day, paid $4 million for a
Stradivarius once owned by Bronislaw Huberman. But Mr. Bell probably couldn't match the winning bid fetched in
2011 by the "Lady Blunt" Stradivarius of 1721. It sold for $15.9 million, the current record for a Stradivari violin, of
which some 600 are said to survive.
So it was with some pride that the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra organized a four-day event last week titled "Strad
Fest L.A.," in which eight Stradivarius violins came together in various combinations for the aural delectation of
Angelenos partial to the warm, honeyed and substantial sound so famously produced by these instruments. While the
festival was far from the largest concentration of such instruments ever assembled, it was an unusually rich gathering
for this city.
Not that Los Angeles is bereft of Stradivarii. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has a Stradivari cello and two fiddles—
one of which, the 1711 "Kreisler," is played regularly by the orchestra's concertmaster, Martin Chalifour, who was
featured prominently with that instrument at this festival. Likewise, Margaret Batjer, the concertmaster of the Los
Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), also plays a Stradivarius—well, sometimes at least. Though her own primary
instrument is a so-called composite—part Stradivarius, part Amati (the master violin maker who taught Stradivari)—
she also performs regularly on the "Milstein" Stradivarius of 1716, an instrument purchased by local philanthropists
Jerry and Terri Kohl from the estate of Nathan Milstein, one of the 20th century's most celebrated violinists. (Mr.
Chalifour also uses this instrument occasionally.)
With LACO looking for a way to honor Mr. and Mrs. Kohl, who last year became the chamber orchestra's most
generous benefactors but didn't want to be feted, Ms. Batjer recalled a seminal experience from her youth: a monthlong
festival held in 1987 in Cremona, Italy—long the world center of violin making—to mark the 250th anniversary of the
death of Stradivari, the city's most famous son. And so a sort a miniature version of that effort was undertaken, saluting
the Kohls while keeping the spotlight from them. In addition to a gala fundraising dinner and concert this past
Saturday, events included an invitation-only lecture and demonstration at the Huntington Library in nearby San Marino
on Wednesday, a portion of an all-Baroque concert at the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, and
a program of violin bonbons called "Fiddlefest" at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica on Friday.
Cho-Liang Lin
Wall St. Journal • March 31, 2014
page 2 of 2
In addition to the "Milstein" and "Kreisler" Stradivarii, two others of the eight featured also now reside in Southern
California. The 1714 "Leonora Jackson" is owned by William Sloan, a urologist and accomplished amateur fiddler; the
1720 "Red Mendelssohn," said to have inspired the film "The Red Violin" (1998), belongs to Elizabeth Pitcairn, a local
violinist. The rest were visitors: the "Serdet" of 1666 and the "Beechback" of c.1720, brought from England by Peter
Beare, a respected luthier and scion of a storied family of violin dealers; the 1708 "Ruby," lent by the Stradivari Society
to Philippe Quint, a New York-based violinist; and the "Titian" of 1715, which the Taiwanese-American soloist ChoLiang Lin purchased a decade ago.
Mr. Lin, who in addition to performing teaches at the Juilliard School in New York and at Rice University in Houston,
was the most famous performer on these programs. The remaining ones were Chee-Yun, from South Korea; Xiang Yu,
born in Mongolia; and Ray Ushikubo, a 12-year-old from Riverside, Calif. But the real stars were the violins. On
Saturday night, Mr. Yu, who now studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, remarked that his
fiddle for the evening—the "Serdet," the oldest known Stradivarius in existence—reminded him "of a wild, gorgeous
horse," like those in his homeland. And on the same program, Chee-Yun said of the "Leonora Jackson": "All Strads
have a big sound, but this one also has warmth. I really don't want to give it back."
Speaking before the festival began, Mr. Lin attempted to characterize his "Titian" in lay terms. "If I can use wine as an
analogy," he began, "this instrument is like a great Burgundy, made from pinot noir grapes. It has a ringing, beautiful,
bell-like quality. It's effortless. I can just draw the bow across the strings."
Others, on both sides of the stage, might use different words to describe a Stradivarius's singular qualities, but they'd be
no less effusive. Stradivari's unique craftsmanship, and his legend, continues to endure. But a chance to hear these
instruments up close and in person reveals that their magic is real. Maintaining that connection—between instrument
and audience—could prove more challenging in future, which makes events like this one that much more important.
CHO-LIANG LIN
U~T San Diego  August 9, 2013
SummerFest’s excellent Loft adventure
UCSD’s informal venue perfect fit for chamber music
BY JAMES CHUTE
Sometimes, everything works.
OK, the food and the service at UC San Diego’s The Loft were spotty.
So maybe not everything.
But once the music started at SummerFest’s first foray into a club-like atmosphere, the intimate, informal venue proved to be
a perfect place to experience chamber music.
The eclectic selection of repertoire by Bartok, Ives, Debussy, Villa-Lobos, Carter and Joshua Roman was perfect.
The performances by violinists Cho-Liang Lin, Philippe Quint and Michelle Kim, cellist Roman, flutist Catherine Ransom
Karoly, pianist Steven Lin and clarinetist Burt Hara were perfect.
Even the performers’ banter with the capacity audience, an area that is often a black hole for musicians, was perfect.
Nobody went on for too long, and they had thoughtful, often entertaining things to say about the music and on occasion, each
other.
Karoly explained that her husband is a cellist and together they frequently perform Villa-Lobos’ “Jet Whistle” for Flute and
Cello. So she felt as if she was being unfaithful playing it with Roman. Then she and Roman proceeded to light a fire under
Villa-Lobos’ eccentric work, capturing all of its rhythmic energy and lyrical impulse.
Cho-Liang Lin and Quint, in several selections from Bartok’s 44 Duos for Two Violins, appeared to be having entirely too
much fun in alert, assured interpretations.
Quint, Roman and Steven Lin also thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company in an enthusiastic rendering of Ives’ remarkable
TSIAJ (“This Scherzo is a Joke”). “My Old Kentucky Home,” and dozens of other songs and hymns Ives uses and abuses
(often at once), never sounded so good. Steven Lin made Ives swing, propelling the music forward without pushing it.
Karoly offered a supple, elegant rendering of Debussy’s “Syrinx,” while Kim, Hara and Steven Lin offered a vibrant yet
nuanced account of Bartok’s “Contrasts.”
In addition to Ives, Villa-Lobos and Carter (the Elegy for Cello and Piano), Roman also played Roman. As he demonstrated
in the other works, he is that too rare performer who is not only an exceptional musician, but plays with an open heart as
well.
There’s something authentic about Roman’s approach to his instrument and the sound he produces, and that same quality is
also evident in his “Riding Light.”
Indeed, the element that made this entire program so appealing was its human quality. It’s inevitably present in music, but
rarely is it so evident.
Let’s hear more.
CHO-LIANG LIN
Detroit Free Press  May 20, 2013
DSO: If it's Thursday, it must be West Bloomfield
BY MARK STRYKER
Last week at Carnegie Hall in New York. Thursday night at the Berman Center in West Bloomfield. Friday morning in
Dearborn. Saturday in Bloomfield Hills. Sunday in Grosse Pointe Farms. Next week back at Orchestra Hall in Detroit.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is moving around a lot as the current season hits its final stretch.
The range of activities and locations says something important about the profile of the orchestra these days,
reestablishing its presence on the national scene while deepening its ties to audiences in suburban Detroit and honoring
its primary home in Detroit, Orchestra Hall — which, by the way, as last week’s trip to New York reminded me,
belongs with Carnegie and Boston’s Symphony Hall as one of the three most rewarding spaces in the country to hear a
symphony orchestra perform.
This week’s Neighborhood Series concerts employ a scaled-down chamber orchestra under the direction of guest
conductor and violinist Cho-Liang Lin; they’re playing music by Mendelssohn, Edward Elgar and Mozart. (In another
echo of the diversity of the DSO’s everyday life, the other half of the orchestra is playing Beatles-themed pops concerts
this weekend at Orchestra Hall.) Thursday’s performance had nice moments, but also came across as a little dull,
lacking contrast. Substituting something with a more modern or contemporary snap for the dreamy English lyricism of
Elgar’s Serenade in E minor for Strings would have helped.
Still, it was a pleasure to hear a subset of the orchestra address a piece of chamber music as imposing as Mendelssohn’s
Octet for Strings, a miracle of formal imagination and emotional depth for a composer of any age, much less one who
was only 16 when he wrote it in 1825. Lin played the first violin part, adopting an aggressive attack and intensity of
sound that wasn’t always matched down the line. There were seams in the ensemble too. But the lighter-than-air
scherzo brought the playing into focus, and in the finale the group’s energy, enthusiasm and execution were all locked
in a warm embrace.
Leaving his violin backstage after intermission, Lin as conductor brought a pleasing muscularity and quick-step tempos
to Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner”); he balanced these elements with naturally expressive phrasing that
prevented the music from turning overly brittle, though greater dynamics would have been welcome in the opening
allegro. But the andante had a graceful lilt with the violas especially effective, and the bold finale left a winning spirit
in the air.
CHO-LIANG LIN
The New York Times  November 26, 2012
A Moment to Be Sentimental, but Not Mushy
New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall
BY ZACHARY WOOLFE
The most moving part of the New York Youth Symphony’s concert on Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall came after the
music had ended.
The final note of Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony faded, thunderous applause began, and the orchestra, made up of
musicians ages 12 to 22, rose for a bow.
That was the first time it was obvious that two adult artists had joined the mix. The violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Michelle
Kim, who had been featured as soloists earlier in the afternoon, had sneaked in for the Dvorak. They were tucked away in a
spot that must have been unfamiliar for both of them: the back of the violin section.
That these well-respected, busy musicians had not rushed out of Carnegie Hall after playing their solos attests to the good
will built over the decades by the orchestra, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this season. Mr. Lin, after all, was once
(1976-77, to be exact) its concertmaster.
Since the orchestra’s early days, its offerings have expanded from symphonic music into the chamber and jazz repertories.
There are workshops in conducting and composition, as well as the invaluable First Music program, which has
commissioned works from more than 100 emerging composers since 1984. The orchestra now even sponsors a First Art
competition for young visual artists.
The ensemble’s concerts clearly have an element of the sentimental — “I remember when he played the cello in his diapers”
was a representative overheard comment — but the quality of the playing is excellent. I had heard the New York
Philharmonic play Dvorak’s “New World” with brisk panache two days before and was, to be honest, dreading the
comparison.
But the youth symphony, alert and with a firm foundation in its clean, clear string sound, more than held its own. Conducted
by its new music director, Joshua Gersen, it was precise in attack in the first movement and, aside from hiccups in the
brasses, focused later on. I preferred Devin Hinzo’s tender, dynamically nuanced English horn solo in the Largo to the stiffer
one at the Philharmonic.
The program for this anniversary celebration was unexceptional. The opening number, Shostakovich’s bustling “Festive
Overture,” seemed chosen primarily to release some jitters among the musicians. Ludwig Maurer’s intermittently charming
Sinfonia Concertante for Four Violins in A featured eloquent work from Mr. Lin, Ms. Kim and the orchestra’s concertmaster,
Samuel Katz, but was most memorable for the sweet-toned playing of the fourth and youngest violinist: Alice IvyPemberton, 15.
But there is always interest in the orchestra’s new commissions from young composers. “Universal at Midnight,” by Gabriel
Zucker, suavely combined a symphony orchestra and a jazz band, beginning with a haunting orchestral hush and passing a
gentle theme through the jazz soloists.
It was a nocturne out of early Bernstein or introspective Sinatra: classic-sounding but a little staid. Mr. Zucker’s influences,
to judge from the epigraphs for this piece, go from Charles Ives to Wilco. I wish “Universal at Midnight” had even more of
that range and spirit of experimentation.
JOSHUA ROMAN
Chicago Classical Review  November 18, 2012
La Jolla Quartet offers a pleasing program at Mandel Hall
BY GERALD FISHER
Exceptional playing at the service of some unusual chamber pieces highlighted Friday evening’s University of Chicago
Presents concert at Mandel Hall. The La Jolla Quartet, named for the annual summer festival in Southern California, consists
of violinist Cho-Liang Lin, CSO clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, harpist Deborah Hoffman, and cellist Joshua Roman. In varying
configurations they presented a program of pleasing and fitfully substantial works culminating in John Williams’ 2011
Quartet La Jolla, written for and dedicated to Lin and Yeh.
The program opened with a charming bit of English pastoralism: a Suite for clarinet and harp from British composer Paul
Reade’s incidental music for the 1980s BBC-TV show The Victorian Kitchen Garden. Using the harp in place of piano as
accompaniment brought out the gem-like nature of these slight pieces, which were played by Yeh with a clean, effortless
tone that bewitched the ear.
A more ambitious work followed, the Concerto a Tre (1946) for clarinet, violin and cello by the California-based
German/American composer Ingolf Dahl (1912–1970). Betraying influences from the neoclassical Stavinsky, this piece
alternates between long reflective sections and jaunty, humorous stretches, and was played impeccably by Yeh, Lin, and the
young American cellist Joshua Roman. Dahl wrote relatively little music, but his works deserve to be heard and enjoyed
much more than often they are.
Another composer who is often underestimated is the eclectic and prolific Jacques Ibert, whose Trio for violin, cello and harp
(1946) displays the characteristic French elements of clarity and grace, made all the more pointed by the artistry of Hoffman.
The three short movements offer plenty of opportunity for solos and ensembles with the cello and harp contributing tender
and romantic elements to the dynamic violin part, the whole work culminating in a brusque and virtuosic finale.
The early twentieth-century Norwegian composer Johann Halvorsen’s Passacaglia for violin and cello, an energetic
transcription of harpsichord music by Handel, used to be a staple of Heifetz’s repertory. The duo’s virtuosic double-stops,
pizzicatos and ornate dynamism make it a real showpiece, fully realized here by the sterling technique of the gifted Lin and
the solid cello-playing of Roman.
The high point of the evening’s program was the unexpectedly masterful Fantasie for violin and harp, Op. 124, written in
1907 by the 72 year- old Camille Saint-Saens. Lin played this episodic piece with a singing tone and perfect intonation,
seconded by the exquisite artistry of harpist Hoffman. This is salon music of the highest quality displaying delicacy and
romantic feeling throughout.
The Quartet La Jolla by composer-conductor John Williams was something of an anticlimax coming as it did after so much
refined glamour. While it was a respectable and even impressive work in spots, ultimately the quartet is lacking in thematic
interest, surprising coming from one of our day’s most prolific and resourceful film composers. The music was abstractly
rhythmic, at times brusque in the first movement Introduction; smoothly harmonic in the Aubade with nice opportunities for
the harp; and bubbly and dynamic in the Scherzo.
The clarinet soared over the cello’s pizzicatos in the fourth movement Cantando and the forward impulse of the Finale,
sounding like Prokofiev at times, had a good humored feel and some generous solo work for violin and cello. Overall it was
fairly conventional music—interesting perhaps for its textures and rhythms, but rather bare in content. That said, it was
beautifully played as was everything else in Friday evening’s performance.
CHO-LIANG LIN
The Strad  June 21, 2012
Cassatt String Quartet, New Paths Ensemble/David Alan Miller,
Cho-Liang Lin (violin) Elebash Recital Hall
BY BRUCE HODGES
Some poor decisions in publicising this one-day festival of Nordic composers, combined with a withering heat wave,
resulted in a meagre audience for a stunning performance by Cho-Liang Lin in a new Violin Concerto by Jukka
Tiensuu. In prefatory remarks, David Alan Miller (the engaging young conductor of the Albany Symphony Orchestra)
joked about the rhythmic challenges of navigating page after page in 15/8 metre. Then he and the New Paths Ensemble
dug into Tiensuu’s imaginative sound world with alertness and virtuosity to spare, while Lin deployed Sibelian warmth
coupled with spot-on intonation. In one particularly riveting passage, Lin converged with violinists Sunghae Anna Lim
and David Fulmer, all using the shimmering stratosphere of their E-strings in a perfectly balanced chorale. And just
prior to the quiet ending, Lin was transfixing in an elaborate cadenza.??
The generous evening in Elebash Recital Hall—with too many composers to cover here—began with the Cassatt String
Quartet in Stefan Pontinen’s new Third String Quartet, an intriguingly constructed melange of clicks, tremolos and
grinding sul ponticello passages. Afterwards came Lasse Thoresen’s Pyr Aionion (Eternal Fire), which opens with
mournful, sweeping phrases that gradually ascend in pitch to an intense climax. Confident playing aside, there is much
to be said for a group that has fully internalised such challenging recent works.
JON KIMURA PARKER & CHO-LIANG LIN
The New York Times  April 27, 2012
Pianist Parker to play with symphony
A John Harbison Sonata at Alice Tully Hall
BY ALLAN KOZINN
New-music fans who object when musical organizations present contemporary works in special concerts, where they
won’t intrude on the classics — the New York Philharmonic’s Contact! series, or the Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse concerts, for example — would have approved of the way the society presented
John Harbison’s new Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano on Tuesday evening at Alice Tully Hall.
The work, which the society commissioned as part of a consortium, was given its world premiere at the concert by the
violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the pianist Jon Kimura Parker, and it was surrounded by two staples of the Romantic
canon: Beethoven’s Trio in E flat (Op. 1, No. 1), for which Mr. Lin and Mr. Parker were joined by the cellist Gary
Hoffman, and Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor (Op. 60), with the violist Richard O’Neill filling out the
ensemble.
Apart from the programmatic vote of confidence that surrounding Mr. Harbison with Beethoven and Brahms
represents, having Mr. Lin and Mr. Parker perform in all three works afforded a measure of continuity that the society’s
concerts do not always have, and in a way, that was a sign of confidence as well: a way of saying that the ensemble
sees Mr. Harbison as part of a historical continuum.
Mr. Harbison’s sonata is substantial, if not especially groundbreaking, and though its language naturally sounds
dissonant in this context, it is never much harsher than early Stravinsky. Indeed, Stravinsky appears to have been on
Mr. Harbison’s mind: fleeting passages have both the acidity and rhythmic jaggedness of the fiddle writing in
“L’Histoire du Soldat.”
But Mr. Harbison also takes a formal approach to structure, pacing and musical development that ties him to Beethoven
and Brahms. His piece is in five distinct but connected movements, including a slow, lyrical aria as its heart and a
closing rondo, to which Mr. Harbison appends a meditative postscript. And when Stravinsky’s influence is softpedaled, others shine through. Some of the piano writing, for instance, is bright, rollicking and jazzy, and both
musicians are given opportunities to show off their strengths and flexibility.
Mr. Lin and Mr. Parker made a strong case for the score in an energetic, unified reading. Those qualities also enlivened
the Beethoven and Brahms performances, which benefited as well from the supple characterization that familiarity can
bring.
In the Beethoven Mr. Parker’s crisply focused pianism captured this early work’s playfulness and sparkle, just as the
shifting balance of warmth and brightness in Mr. Lin’s and Mr. Hoffman’s tone caught the young Beethoven’s nods to
courtly propriety and bursts of rebellious assertiveness.
In the Brahms the ensemble’s robust interplay countered the work’s gravitas without thoroughly dispelling it. The vigor
with which Mr. Parker pounced on themes in the scherzo was especially striking. So was the ensemble’s decision to
prize passion over drive in the finale.
CHO-LIANG LIN
Financial Times  January 19, 2012
Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival
BY KEN SMITH
„Paris and Shanghai‟, at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre, cleverly balanced Chinese songs and French chamber works by
Debussy, Franck and others
After two reasonably successful outings, the ambitious Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival entered its
third season last week with something of a rebranding. The first of the changes was the calendar, with the festival
shifting from its previous spot during a typically eventful spring to the traditionally dead time between western and
Chinese New Years. Then came the matter of personnel.
Under its founding artistic director, the Hong Kong-born, Juilliard-trained cellist Trey Lee, the festival had initially
assembled well-matched rosters of local players and young competition winners, some of whom were discovering
individual pieces for the first time. Violinist Cho-Liang Lin, a veteran artistic director of music festivals in places
ranging from La Jolla, California, to his native Taipei, now comes to the HKICMF with practically the entire roster of
the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on his speed dial. And yet the underlying success of HKICMF 2.0 lay
less in world-class playing by marquee names than in finding a similar collaborative balance on a higher plateau.
That balance found its way into the repertory as well. Although Wednesday‟s concert at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre
was nominally billed “Paris and Shanghai”, a mixture of Chinese songs and French chamber works supposedly evoking
a French Concession salon in the 1920s, specific works seemed programmed with more pragmatic reasons in mind.
Saint-Saëns‟ Fantaisie for Violin and Harp opened the evening, with Lin‟s sweet lyrical tone in fluid contrast to harpist
Naoko Yoshino‟s rhythmical solidity. The Shanghai Quartet and pianist Shai Wosner let the strains of Chausson‟s
Chanson Perpétuelle waft evocatively around soprano Ying Huang. Flutist Marina Piccinini floated smoothly though
Jean-Pierre Rampal‟s arrangement of Franck‟s Violin Sonata.
Pleasant pieces all, but merely pleasant. The thinking behind their presence became apparent only after the interval,
when a handful of players appeared in markedly different contexts. Huang, after sustaining the mood of the Chausson,
played for contrast in Huang Zi‟s Five Chinese Songs (arranged for singer and string quartet by Shanghai Quartet
second violinist Yi-Weng Jiang). Piccinini and Yoshino returned with violist Paul Neubauer in Debussy‟s Sonata for
Flute, Viola and Harp, offering such transparency that the timbral interplay became poetry unto itself.
Debussy and Ravel rounded out the evening, with Lin and Yoshino joined by violinist Michael Ma, violist Andrew
Ling, cellist Desmond Hoebig and double bassist DaXun Zhang in Debussy‟s Danses Sacrée et Profane, with Hoebig
and Zhang replaced by Piccinini and clarinettist Zhai Yao-Guang in Ravel‟s Introduction and Allegro.
CHO-LIANG LIN
TimeOut Hong Kong  January 17, 2012
HKICMF: Modern Masters - Ghost Opera Review
BY SATOSHI KYO
APA, Jockey Club Amphitheatre, Sunday January 14
From the 3rd Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival came this concert that juxtaposed Bela Bartok with
Chen Yi and Tan Dun, an ingenious programme that not only emphasize their commonality but also their
distinctiveness in their use of folk music. Furthermore, the programme also demonstrated how inspiration from folk
music has developed from Bartok’s time to today, and from the west to the east.
The concert, Modern Masters – Ghost Opera, opened with six (of 44) pieces from Bartok’s Duos for Two Violins B.B.
104 (No 2, 10, 28, 35, 42, 44). Originally composed for didactic purpose and all based on folk music, the pieces are
numbered in increasing order of difficulty. Clara-Jumi Kang and Henning Kraggerud played the pieces finely,
displaying the technical and artistic considerations needed as the pieces progressed. Chen Yi’s Fiddle Suite for Erhu &
Quartet is an exploration of the erhu sound, coaxing it into Singing, Reciting and Dancing (three movements). Erhu
virtuoso Wong On-Yuen superbly played three different types of the traditional Chinese instrument, while the Shanghai
Quartet provided a landscape of tactile sounds for the erhu’s to inhabit. Back to Bartok, the Shanghai Quartet gave a
stellar performance of the tightly constructed String Quartet No 3 and was perfectly unfazed by the extended
instrumental techniques it called for.
From concert to theatre, the second half was the stunning staging of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera. While Chen Yi’s suite
brought the west to the east, Tan Dun’s opera brought the east to the west. Shakespeare was interpolated with chanting
of the monks and Bach was alternated with a simple folk song, created parallel worlds slipping in and out of each other,
dissimilar yet attuned to a common energy. The piece can’t ask for a better ensemble than Cho-Liang Lin, Zhu Bei,
Andrew Ling, Li Xiao-Lu and Zhang Ying. The eastern sensibility that they brought to the piece was moving and
central to its full realisation.
CHO-LIANG LIN
TimeOut Hong Kong  January 12, 2012
3rd HKICMF - Gala Opening Night
BY MARK TJHUNG
3rd Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival - Gala Opening Night Concert
City Hall, Wednesday January 11
It almost feels wrong to single out any performers when it comes to chamber music. Such is its collaborative nature –
the intimate connections, the subtle nuances, the sheer exposed reliance on your peers – that it seems slightly
incompatible with celebrating a star performer. But such were the circumstances of the opening night of the 3rd Hong
Kong International Chamber Music Festival, kicking off more than a week of almost 20 concerts and events, that it was
almost inevitable that a certain Ning Feng would steal the limelight. Earning a late call up (along with Desmond
Hoebig, deputizing for the injured Gary Hoffman) for the sick and unable-to-travel violinist Kyoko Takezawa, the
young Chinese violinist wowed the bravo-spouting audience with his effortless virtuosity, clarity and command. It’s
not the first time we’ve witnessed Ning in Hong Kong – but he does seem to be getting more impressive with each
visit.
Of course, he didn’t steal the limelight easily. It was a spotlight that veered –was wrestled with, you could say –
throughout the night. The collective started very much as the champion. The opener Last Round by Argentinean
composer Osvaldo Golijov was as much a visual spectacle as aural – a scene of dueling string quartets that filled City
Hall with avant garde drama, tension, glissandos and occasional machismo fire – with festival curator Cho-Liang Lin
leading with aplomb. The Piazzolla Suite continued the Argentine conversation, with the quintet impressively capturing
the essence of this sensual and flamboyant work with a particularly energetic and passionate reading, despite a difficult
arrangement of four violins and bass. But once Ning and DaXun Zhang came together for Bottesini’s Grand Duo
Concertante for Violin and Double Bass, the evening took on an even more special aura, with their virtuosic
conversations, alternating between Ning’s crisp and colourful passages to Zhang’s high-register flourishes, resonating
throughout the night.
For moments during the crowd-favourite finale Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, both Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud,
with a boyish charm and exemplary musicianship, and the talented, elegant and silver-shoe donning Clara-Jumi Kang
won hearts. The audience was also dazzled by the collective display of Lin, Kang, Kraggerud, Ning and Zhang for the
Brahms encore. But it was Ning that stole the show. And while that may be so, the whole evening was a rather special
advertisement for the potential of chamber music.
CHO-LIANG LIN
South China Morning Post  December 11, 2011
Chamber music festival raises the bar
BY SAM OLLUVER
The Chamber Music Festival's new artistic director Jimmy Lin is determined to add value with educational satellite
events including masterclasses, open rehearsals and free concerts
The 3rd Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival (ICMF) will ring in the New Year as the city's first major
classical music event of 2012.
Opening on January 11, it sports a line-up of top-flight international artists in programmes that feature both comfortzone favourites and intriguing rarities in six concerts and a clutch of outreach events. Eighteen performers from the
mainland, Japan, South Korea, Europe, Canada and the US will be teaming up with a further eight from Hong Kong's
own pool of talent.
While the format of the festival follows that of its first two years, the guiding hand is new: Jimmy Lin, the TaiwaneseAmerican violinist, takes over from cellist Trey Lee Chui-yee as its artistic director.
"My history with this place goes back a long way," the 51-year-old says, having first performed in Hong Kong more
than 30 years ago. He has since made regular solo appearances, including during the 1997 handover celebrations, when
he was guest artist with both the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Asian Youth Orchestra.
Lin is no stranger to the demands of staging music extravaganzas, having founded the Taipei International Music
Festival in 1997 (the largest classical music festival in the history of Taiwan) and being the music director of the La
Jolla Music Society's SummerFest in California since 2001.
The ICMF brochure headlines a quotation about Lin from the Los Angeles Times describing him as a "rare
combination of virtuosity and humanity". The virtuoso tag is exemplified by the 1989 Gramophone Recording of the
Year award for his CD of the Nielsen and Sibelius violin concertos. But what about the reference to humanity? "I have
no idea," Lin says. It doesn't take long, however, to turn up a few pointers to the possible reason.
In October, he had completed an eight-day recital tour in Taiwan, when he decided to build on the success of a similar
project undertaken only five months earlier. That had so moved him that he resolved to repeat the exercise.
"We decided not to do just yet another concert tour, but to do something truly meaningful," Lin says. "I went to really
remote towns and played full-length recitals in the evening, but each event was preceded by a visit to an even more
remote school. I had conversations with the kids who were in the music programmes and presented all sorts of musical
challenges to them. It was wonderful."
Lin's commitment to the young is further reflected in his role as a teacher at New York's Juilliard School of Music and
Rice University in Texas; he keeps around a dozen students under his wing.
"It's important to receive benefits and help when one is growing up," he says. "And when one is in a position to give
back, one has to do it." Ironically, that commitment to education contributed to the undoing of his association with the
Taipei International Music Festival that wrapped up in 2003. Lin recalls: "The presenter had this singular vision that it
should be a mega-star gathering, that the artists would play and then just leave."
Cho-Liang Lin
South China Morning Post  December 11, 2011
page 2 of 2
His petitions for more educational offshoots fell on deaf ears and so he parted company with his own brainchild: "I'm
so glad that here in Hong Kong we will have this. It's more taxing on the musicians, of course, but I think all my
colleagues realise the importance of bringing the music to more people."
Those co-performers have all been hand-picked by Lin to match the repertoire he has chosen.
"I can just intuitively feel who would match whom well," he says, citing his choice of pianist Andreas Haefliger
(Switzerland), violinists Kyoko Takezawa (Japan) and German-born Clara-Jumi Kang, plus violist Paul Neubauer and
cellist Gary Hoffman (both from the US) for Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor at the closing night gala concert on
January 19.
The same programme includes Mozart's Piano Quartet in G minor, Schubert's The Shepherd on the Rock, for soprano,
piano and clarinet, and a selection from Beethoven's Scottish Songs for soprano and piano trio.
Although an East-West flavour permeates two of the other concerts, it isn't for the sake of appeasing those on the fusion
bandwagon. Lin is keen to juxtapose the music of Bartok and Tan Dun since they are both nationalistic icons, wrapped
up in the traditional music of their respective countries, Hungary and China.
"Tan Dun always maintains that he gets most of his inspiration from Bartok's music," Lin says, which has inspired him
to pit Tan's Ghost Opera for string quartet and pipa against Bartok's String Quartet No 3. Having played the repertoire
for many years, the performers will descend on Hong Kong City Hall with all the notes under the fingers.
But how does an agreed, corporate interpretation of the music then firm up? Lin believes that his first house rule will
take care of any unhelpful assertiveness from individual artists. "For me, there's no prima donna. I always say at a
festival like this: everybody can check their ego at the door; everybody's equal."
To illustrate the point, he refers to the opening concert, which features Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as the main work.
Lin has assigned four players to take the solo part, one for each season. When they're done, they will withdraw to the
second violins and accompany.
That same concert will invite selected teenagers in the audience to submit a critical review of the event, with a view to
having the best entry published, having given them pointers in advance on how to listen to the music from a more
searching perspective. It's just one of the satellite activities surrounding the mainstream performances that include open
rehearsals, masterclasses, chamber music coaching and several free community concerts that are tasters for the full
performance package.
Lin will be leading from the front by performing in three of the concerts, giving the audience an opportunity to savour
not only his artistry but also the sound of his instrument, the "Titian" Stradivarius which he acquired six years ago.
"It has a very beautiful sound and a very long and distinguished pedigree. It came from one of the greatest years of
Stradivarius' output - 1715," he says. "If I sound bad, I can't blame it on the violin any more."
JON KIMURA PARKER & CHO-LIANG LIN
D Magazine  November 16, 2011
FrontRow Classical Music Concert Review: A Light, French
Musical Evening Finds Its Swagger
BY WAYNE LEE GAY
One might, at first, feel a little misled by the designation of the mostly-French, totally Francophile program Tuesday at
Bass Performance Hall as “An Evening in Paris.” There was little hint of chestnut blossoms or can-can dancers or
moonlit fountains.
But, on a more profound level, the repertoire selected for this collaboration of violinist Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Jon
Kimura Parker was very much a reflection of a time when Paris had become a focus of reexamination, of deepening of
shadows, and of realization of both the incredible possibilities and horrible realities of the early twentieth century.
Parker and Lin devoted the bulk of the evening to four substantial multi-movement works, opening with the most lighthearted of the group, the Suite Italienne arranged by violinist Samuel Dushkin from Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite,
which in turn was derived from Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella of 1919, which was in turn based on melodies from the
eighteenth-century Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi. Light-hearted, yes, but light-hearted in reaction to both the
First World War and the ponderous late romanticism that preceded it. Parker and Lin immediately revealed the
wonderful combination of energy, imaginative timing, and precise execution this music demands.
They retreated briefly toward the more conventional expectations the title “An Evening in Paris” might convey with
Jascha Heifetz’s transcription of Debussy’s dusky song “Beau Soir” (for which violinist Lin conjured a strikingly dark
timbre) and the Stravinsky-Dushkin arrangement of Stravinksy’s Tango before moving back to a more serious tone
with Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano form 1916—an austere work apt to surprise any listener who’s expecting
Clair de Lune or Afternoon of a Faun.
After intermission, Lin and Parker returned with the evening’s second full-fledged Sonata for Violin and Piano, this
time by Poulenc, who, as a younger contemporary to the three other composers on the program, produced a music in
which the sense of contradictory trends was even greater. In this performance, the listener could sense a triumph of (or,
maybe, surrender to) pure, kinetic intellectualism.
An all-Ravel section closed the evening, beginning with two short, delicate crowd pleasers (the Berceuse sur le nom de
Gabriel Faure and the Habanera) followed up by the Sonata for Violin and Piano. Once again, the opulent
impressionism we associate with the composer was far behind. The most striking of many beautiful moments arriving
in the gently jazzy middle movement, expertly shaped by this amazing piano-violin team. For an encore, the duo
returned to the Tango motif but departed fromParis for a beautifully broad exercise in that genre from late-twentiethcentury Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla.
JON KIMURA PARKER & CHO-LIANG LIN
TheaterJones  November 16, 2011
French Connection
BY GREGORY SULLIVAN ISAACS
Jon Kimura Parker and Cho-Liang Lin take the Cliburn Concerts audience to heavenly heights, via Paris.
It would take a whole thesaurus of superlatives to properly describe the concert at Bass Hall in Fort Worth on Tuesday.
Pianist Jon Kimura Parker and violinist Cho-Liang Lin, under the auspices of the Cliburn Concerts, presented "An
Evening in Paris," but it was really an evening in a musical heaven.
Before the first notes were played, just looking at the program was enough to intrigue. They presented four major
works that were all written in approximately the same era by composers that were either French or French-connected.
There were three sonatas and one pseudo-sonata.
Claude Debussy's 1917 sonata was his final completed composition. The leaner textures of this work and the fantastical
writing in the second movement in no way hide the composer's harmonic innovations but points to the neo-classical
movement that was to come. That movement was ushered in by the piece that opened the program, Stravinsky's 1920
ballet Pulcinello, in a 1925 arrangement by the violinist Samuel Dushkin. Dushkin knew Stravinsky's style from the
inside out, he played the premiere of the composer's violin concerto, and his arrangement perfectly caught the mood of
the larger work.
Maurice Ravel's Sonata dates from 1922 and was dedicated to Debussy's memory. In it, he mimics the leaner textures
of Debussy's sonata while looking forward with a bluesy second movement (which is actually entitles "Blues"). A later
work, but still in the same neo-classical line, is Francis Poulenc's 1942 Sonata. Here, Ravel's blues are traded for the
café or boîte style, as demonstrated so beautifully in the Intermezzo movement.
Simply put, although there was nothing simple about it, the performances on Tuesday evening were faultless. The
Parker/Lin pairing caught the distinctive differences of each composer and composition. Hearing them together, so
expertly played, was both an inspiring and enlightening experience. Those in attendance will never think about these
works in the same way again.
The program surrounded these monumental works with some related bonbons. They played an evocative Heifetz
transcription of Debussy's song Beau Soir and two pieces by Ravel, his Berceuse sur le non de Gabriel Faure and a
student work, Piece en form de Habanera.
One other selection had a personal relationship to Lin that he related from the stage. He bought his first Stradivarius
violin from Dushkin's widow. While he was there to pick it up, she offered him an arrangement of a Stravinsky tango
that her husband had written and that was still in manuscript form in a drawer. She asked if he would like it. Silly
question.
Also on a more humorous note, Parker gave some background on the discovery of Ravel's student work, the Habanera,
which was played earlier. "Unfortunately, unlike the Dushkin, we didn't get the manuscript from Mrs. Ravel," he
quipped.
(Mrs. Ravel? That would be the composer's mother?)
A tango by Astor Piazzolla was a fiery encore.
JON KIMURA PARKER & CHO-LIANG LIN
Fort Worth Star-Telegram  November 15, 2011
Familiar musicians are a treat as a duo
BY OLIN CHISM
FORT WORTH -- Pianist Jon Kimura Parker and violinist Cho-Liang Lin are familiar faces in Dallas-Fort Worth, but
they are generally heard separately rather than as musical partners. The audience at Tuesday night's Cliburn at the Bass
concert saw and heard them together, and it was quite a treat.
Their program was titled "An Evening in Paris." It featured music by composers who were either French or were
intimately associated with that great city.
For me, the high point of their remarkably varied program was its conclusion. A brilliant performance of a masterpiece,
Maurice Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Piano, displayed their individual gifts as well as their spot-on teamwork; they
were on the same wavelength all the way.
Not the least of their gifts is the ability to impart a sense of personality through the music they play. For Americans,
this would certainly be true of the middle movement of three: Ravel titled it Blues; it's one of several nods by the
composer in our direction. It highlights the violin, and Lin imparted just the right mood.
Another winner was Claude Debussy's Sonata for Violin and Piano, the composer's last completed composition -- he
wrote it as he was dying of cancer. This was atmospherically played by Parker and Lin. The first movement of the work
seems a little melancholy, but the final two movements are more life-affirming. You'd hardly guess the circumstances
of its creation.
Igor Stravinsky was represented by two Samuel Dushkin arrangements: Suite Italienne (probably the most familiar
work of the evening to most of the audience) and a rarity, Tango, which is a witty take on the dance, with a cute ending.
Another take on a dance was Ravel's Cuban-flavored Piece en forme de Habanera. A Jascha Heifetz arrangement of
Debussy's lovely Beau Soir (somewhat akin in mood to Claire de Lune), Ravel's Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Faure
(another brief, lovely work) and Francis Poulenc's Sonata for Violin and Piano rounded out an interesting program.
Parker and Lin had a discerning audience; several professional violinists from North Texas were in attendance.
JON KIMURA PARKER & CHO-LIANG LIN
bachtrack  November 15, 2011
Cosmopolitan Paris: An evening with Cho-Liang Lin and Jon
Kimura Parker
BY EVAN MITCHELL
What’s in a name, or for that matter, a label? Why does music “sound” German, American, French, or Russian?
Violinist Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Jon Kimura Parker presented a duo recital at Fort Worth’s Bass Hall Tuesday
evening, titled “An Evening in Paris”. Their thoughtful program consisted of works by French composers of the early
twentieth century, and also by (long-time Parisian) Stravinsky. This kind of open-ended theme typically leads an
audience to draw its own conclusions. Here, though, these works resonated (and contrasted) with one another in a way
that was telling; the “modernity” of Modernism and its contemporaneous movements in the arts, and indeed the
“Frenchness” of French music, were not one-dimensional but rather the result of a variety of influences and cultures.
Grossly oversimplified, the French aesthetic in the arts prizes finely crafted beauty on the surface. This stands (so the
dichotomy goes) opposed to the Germanic ideal of emotional truth being buried deep within a work, waiting to be
interpreted. The pieces heard this evening – by Stravinsky, Debussy, Poulenc, and Ravel – all shared certain aspects of
the archetypal “French” sound. Their source material and inspirations, however, ranged from South American popular
music to Baroque suites to the World Wars to the blues.
The substantial works were: the Suite Italienne, arranged by Stravinsky and violinist Samuel Dushkin, comprising an
introduction and five neo-Baroque movements based on the ballet Pulcinella; Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano,
dating from the years of the First World War; the Poulenc Sonata for Violin and Piano, written during the Second and
full of anguish (it memorialized Federico García Lorca); and Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, the most remarkable
aspect of which is the second movement, “Blues”, replete with banjo-esque strumming on the violin and swung bass
riffs in the piano part. These larger works were interspersed with several charming shorter ones: Debussy’s song “Beau
Soir”, transcribed by Jascha Heifetz; a tango arranged by Stravinsky and Dushkin; and two pieces by Ravel, the
Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré and the Pièce en forme de Habanera.
The works were cleverly woven together. There was the Debussy mélodie, a work when the composer was 16, coupled
with the Violin Sonata, the final work he completed. The Ravel set matched a late masterpiece (the Violin Sonata) with
one from his student years (the Habanera), and also the Berceuse, in which Ravel used solfége syllables (“Do, Re, Mi,”
etc…) to make a tune out of the older composer Fauré’s name. The most interesting link between works on the program
was a personal one connecting the two transcriptions done by Stravinsky and Dushkin. After their performance of the
Suite Italienne Mr. Lin told the fascinating story of his connection to the Tango, the other Stravinsky-Dushkin
arrangement. In 1983, after deciding on his first violin purchase, Mr. Lin went to pick up the instrument from one Mrs.
Dushkin. The violin had belonged to her late husband, and before leaving her home Mr. Lin was given the manuscript
to this unpublished work, which, like the Suite Italienne, had been a showpiece for the duo on their 1932 tour of
Europe.
Mr. Lin and Mr. Parker were at the height of their powers Tuesday evening, in playing that combined immaculate
precision with great introspection, varied colors, and sincerity. While hypersensitive to detail and in command of
myriad timbres, moments like the outbursts of pathos in the Allegro vivo of Poulenc’s Sonata and the glorious release
of the major-harmony climaxes in the Ravel Sonata’s otherwise demure Allegretto were rendered with warmth and
Jon Kimura Parker & Cho-Liang Lin
bachtrack  November 15, 2011
page 2 of 2
vigor. The dramatic pacing of the evening, both over the course of the sonatas themselves and especially in comparison
with the casual grace of the short pieces, lent such straightforward statements of emotionality even greater poignancy,
set in relief against the cool, shimmering surfaces ever-present in the recital.
To bring things truly full circle, the duo played an arrangement of Ástor Piazzolla’s Libertango as an encore. (Mr. Lin
announced the work, admitting to having caught the “tango bug”.) Somehow this was a most fitting end to the evening
– a piece by an Argentinian, with an auxiliary relation to only one brief work on the program, an appropriation of Latin
music by two Russians living in Paris. Piazzolla’s music is closer than many composers’ to vernacular styles, but still
dressed in formal European trimmings for the concert hall. As an epilogue to an evening of highly cosmopolitan works,
the tango served as a reminder that boundaries in art music – genre, nationality, or a host of other criteria – are, while
convenient in principle, never clear.
CHO-LIANG LIN
Los Angeles Times  August 21, 2011
Music review: a John Williams premiere at SummerFest
BY MARK SWED
John Williams has summoned heroes for the movies, victors for the Olympics and whatever the cat brings in for the
nightly news. But he also makes news. He wrote “Air and Simple Gifts” — a quartet for clarinet, piano, violin and
cello — for President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. That must have been the first time in history when an audience
of hundreds of millions worldwide heard the premiere of a piece of chamber music.
Even so, a modest chamber work under five minutes and understated in tone seemed an anomaly for a composer
celebrated for his cinematic blockbusters, big orchestral works (a symphony and more than a dozen concertos) and
vivid fanfares. With “Quartet La Jolla,” however, Williams now has in his catalog a chamber music of more substance
— a reflective, long-breathed half-hour quartet for the colorful combination of violin, cello, clarinet and harp. It was
commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the La Jolla chamber music festival SummerFest and given its premiere
Friday at Sherwood Auditorium.
Not that Williams, even at 79, has all that much time for reflection. Steven Spielberg and the composer’s public are
always calling. Over the next year, Williams scores will be featured in three Spielberg films (“The Adventures of
Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn,” “War Horse” and “Lincoln”). The composer could not be at SummerFest on Friday. He
was conducting favorites from his film scores with the Boston Pops at Tanglewood over the weekend. This weekend,
you can find him doing the same thing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.
But two other composers, Sean Shepherd and Joan Tower, were on hand for SummerFest’s annual evening of
commissions and premieres. A piano quartet from the French composer Marc-André Dalbavie, also intended for the
program, was not finished in time and has been postponed for next summer. So the program wound up as a look at two
famed American composers in their 70s and a “whippersnapper,” as Shepherd, 32, described himself when introducing
his capricious Oboe Quartet. Tower’s piece, “White Granite,” is a piano quartet.
Perhaps the first thing to be praised about SummerFest is the exceptionally high quality of performances. The players
in the festival, which runs through Aug. 27, include well-known soloists and some of the nation’s top orchestra players.
The ensemble for Williams’ quartet were the famed violinist Cho-Liang Lin, music director of SummerFest; John
Bruce Yeh, principal clarinet of the Chicago Symphony; Deborah Hoffman, principal harp of the Metropolitan Opera
Orchestra; and Joshua Roman, a YouTube star. A modern musician himself, Williams coached the ensemble through a
Skype connection from Tanglewood.
“Quartet La Jolla” is genial. Outside of the film studio, he does not appear to call attention to himself. Yeh, in fact,
made affectionate fun of this when he mimicked the soft-spoken Williams as he read a short letter to the audience from
the composer.
The score, in five movements, has a French flavor, no doubt inspired by the harp. The second movement is an aubade,
the old troubadour form that French composers love. The harp, Williams writes in his program note, is the score’s
spiritual center. The harp writing, however, is conventional. The allure was is in clarinet, highlighted by Yeh’s fluent
playing. The memorable movement is the fourth, titled Cantando, a sweet clarinet song touched with by Bartók,
Copland and the blues.
Cho-Liang Lin
Los Angeles Times  August 21, 2011
page 2 of 2
Tower’s “White Granite” lasted 17 minutes but seemed to go by in a flash. She has a gift for keeping listeners on the
edge of their seat. Her engrossing dramatic gestures are like small adventures around every corner. The piano part,
played by André-Michel Schub, is brilliant. The others in the ensemble were violinist Margaret Batjer, violist Paul
Neubauer and Roman.
The oboist for Shepherd’s quartet was Liang Wang, principal of the New York Philharmonic, whose hopping about in
this piece, whether antic or elegiac, was spectacular. This too had a notable, terrific ensemble (violinist Jennifer Koh,
violist Cynthia Phelps and cellist Felix Fan).
Shepherd, from Reno, will next season be a composer fellow of the Cleveland Orchestra. He bears watching. A
"Tristan"-esque section in the middle of the quartet was altogether haunting.
CHO-LIANG LIN & JON KIMURA PARKER
Oregon Music News  July 15, 2011
Parker, Lin, and Hoffman create magic with Brahms Piano Trios
BY JAMES BASH
Pianist Jon Kimura Parker, violinist Cho-Liang Lin, and cellist Gary Hoffman gave spellbinding performances of the
three piano trios of Johannes Brahms on Monday evening (July 11). Their concert, presented by Chamber Music
Northwest, rocked the full house at Kaul Auditorium with warm-hearted, lyrical, and edge-of-the-seat playing that
makes audiences listen with the utmost intensity. During their entire performance, very few coughs occurred, and I
didn’t hear a single dropped programs or cell phone interruption.
The high-caliber playing of this threesome resulted in superb performances in which the ensemble sounded as one, yet
each individual was distinct. Highlights of the Brahms Trio No. 2 in C Major included seamless exchanges between the
players in first movement, the understated Hungarian flavor of the second, the highly articulated and nervous quality of
the third, and the stormy dynamics in the fourth.
In the hands of Parker, Lin, and Hoffman, the melody at the beginning of the Trio No. 3, in C Minor was like a
beautiful aria. The ensemble excelled in creating hushed tones, immaculate pizzicatos, leisurely moods, and dramatic,
full-throated cries that gave an immediacy to Brahms’s music as if it were written just yesterday instead of 125 years
ago.
The Trio No. 1 in B Major also received superb treatment from Parker, Lin, and Hoffman. One of the terrific moments
in the first passage occurred when the violinist and cellist played the exact same notes so that each one sounded larger.
The light, repetitive theme in the second movement sparkled. In the third, the piano perfectly echoed – as if from a
distance – passages from the strings, and the fourth topped it all off with themes that expressed sadness and happiness
at the same time.
Parker, Lin, and Hoffman have just the right chemistry whenever the get together. They were marvelous last year at the
festival when they played Brahms’s Trio No. 3 in C Minor (reviewed here), and I hope that they will return to Chamber
Music Northwest next year.
CHO-LIANG LIN
Classical Music Sentinel  May 9, 2011
GEORG TINTNER - VIOLIN SONATA - PIANO SONATA IN F
MINOR - OTHER PIANO WORKS - CHO-LIANG LIN (Violin) HELEN HUANG (Piano)
BY JEAN-YVES DUPERRON
When Georg Tintner passed away tragically in 1999, not only did we lose a very good conductor, we also lost a great
composer. Many times throughout his life, he moved from one conducting post to another until he settled in Canada in
1987, as Music Director of Symphony Nova Scotia in Halifax. He made many good recordings during his career, but
the ones that won him many praises and respect are his recordings of all the Bruckner Symphonies for Naxos produced
at the very end of his life.
He considered himself a "composer who conducts, with an ambition to write beautiful music". I believe he was right on
both counts. His music is definitely beautiful, and I assume that had he been allowed the option to continue composing
throughout his life, that his compositions would have greatly surpassed his need to conduct for a living. Most of his
writing was done in the early stages of his life, and his Austrian roots poke through the foundation of all his music. It is
music with purpose, intent, vision, and strongly Late Romantic in it's layout, with long intervals, big harmonic leaps,
forward looking but strongly attached to the past in it's emotional outlook.
The Violin Sonata for example, written in 1944, shows a composer who knows how to introduce different motifs or
subjects and develop them to their full potential all the while keeping a clear focus on the work as a whole. The
Scherzo movement for example has the subject matter moving from violin to piano and back, from right hand to left
hand and back, from dark tinges to bright and bold moments, constantly maintaining a strong momentum and sense of
direction at all times. It is hyper-romantic and avant-garde all in one, with the great Cho-Liang Lin pushing the
expressive limits of his violin and Helen Huang providing an equally strong line from the piano.
The piano Prelude - Sehnsucht (Longing) is straight out of Scriabin territory. The piano work Auf den Tod eines
Freundes (On the Death of a Friend), written when he was a teenager, sounds like something an older Robert
Schumann, or even an old Brahms would have written. And the one movement Piano Sonata, written around the same
time, is again Scriabinesque in it's long intervals, bold harmonies, one could even say a certain level of "idées de
grandeurs", and constant crosstalk between both hands as they share thematic material in one strong solid line from
start to finish. Amazing stuff that you would assume was written by someone much older.
Thank you so much to Lin and Huang for taking the time to learn and master these obscure pieces and sharing them
with us, and again, Bravo to the people at Naxos for giving us the opportunity to hear great music that might otherwise
have been lost forever.
After 1962 he fell virtually silent, owing to a combination of personal tragedies, the loss of his culture and
transplantation into alien lands where he was little understood, and not knowing which language to use once serialism
had had it's day. His inability to express himself was a matter of enduring grief to him. Although his music was not
suppressed, as was that of many Jewish composers, he was certainly a "lost composer". {Tanya Tintner}
CHO-LIANG LIN
Bangkok Post  March 22, 2011
Cho-Liang Lin thrills Bangkok fans playing 1715 'Titian'
Stradivarius
Even though the rain poured heavily and the capital was experiencing one of its notorious traffic jams, the "Mozart and
Tchaikovsky" concert, which was part of the Great Artists of the World 2011 concert series organised by the Bangkok
Symphony Orchestra, was well received by local music lovers who showed great enthusiasm.
The concert featured maestro Michel Tilkin as guest conductor, and Cho-Liang Lin, world-renowned violinist, with the
Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. The evening programme ranged from a stirring overture and a sublime violin concerto,
to a dazzling gypsy-like virtuosic piece and a rich romantic symphony.
After appearing on the stage, maestro Tilkin requested from the audience a moment of silence in memory of the victims
of Japan's current catastrophe.
The fast-driving rhythmic pulse from the wind instruments in Carl Maria von Weber's Der Beherrscher der Geister
(Ruler of the Spirits) proved to be a fun and excellent choice to commence the programme.
Maestro Tilkin's rendition was colourful, intense and enjoyable. He has a natural way of communicating with the
members of the orchestra, perhaps because he was a principal trombonist in many orchestras before pursuing his career
as a conductor. When the score permitted, he let each instrument show off their solo passages while pauses of silence
were sharp and convincing.
Mozart himself was a skilful viola player, pianist and violinist. He wrote five violin concertos in his teens mainly for
himself to perform. Cho-Liang Lin delivered Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 213 with superb and
refined taste. In addition to having a successful performing and recording career, he has been one of the most soughtafter violin teachers. The audience, especially violinists, had a wonderful chance to hear one of Antonio Stradivarius's
masterpieces, the "Titian" Stradivarius of 1715, being played.
Lin's performance was flawless, articulate, elegant and naturally beautiful. His skills made the sound of the "Titian" an
imaginative and limitless art piece. The orchestra provided a good companion to him. The syncopated rhythmic
conversations between them were subtle but spirited, while his cadenza had great facets of crystal-clear sound.
Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs), Op 20 composed by Spanish virtuosic violinist and composer Pablo de Sarasate was
certainly a flamboyant piece among the advanced repertoire for violin. Lin brought the exotic Spanish gypsy flavours
out expressively and dazzlingly, and maestro Tilkin never missed the communication between his orchestral colleagues
and Lin.
He gave freedom to the Taiwanese violinist, and was able to come in precisely when Lin wanted to move forward or
hold back. The piece was stylish and enjoyable from beginning to end. The fast section precise and full of not only dash
but surprise as well. The audience undoubtedly had a blast and the roar of applause at the first curtain resulted in two
encores.
Cho-Liang Lin
Bangkok Post  March 22, 2011
page 2 of 2
Cast in four movements, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op 36 represents the height of Russia's romantic
era. It's depth of emotional and complexity of chromaticism played an important role. Maestro Tilkin led the orchestra
members to show off every possibility of nuance and sensation.
The brass sections created the bursting sound with grand character, although sometimes were a little bit off balance.
The woodwind section did a wonderful job passing the melody back and forth among themselves while accompanied
by strings. The famous oboe solo of the second movement played by the veteran Damrih Banawitayakit sounded
beautiful but also somewhat lonely and sorrowful.
The third movement was special for its character in that the whole string section played pizzicato _ the plucking of the
strings _ while the piccolo layered a bright and lively melody over it. Although there were minor defects in the difficult
parts of the horns, overall, the fourth movement provided a dramatic and convincing end.
CHO-LIANG LIN
San Diego Union-Tribune  August 22, 2010
Cho-Liang Lin makes good on favorite program
BY JAMES CHUTE
'Debussy's Paris' proves a congenial place for SummerFest
It wasn’t exactly the same as an athlete guaranteeing a win. But it was close. When SummerFest music director ChoLiang Lin came out on stage to introduce Sunday’s concert at Sherwood Auditorium, he said of all the programs in this
year’s festival, this was his favorite. And by the time the intriguing, even revelatory concert of music by Debussy,
Hahn and Ravel was over, it may have been everybody else’s favorite, too.
Certainly Lin did his part in Hahn’s Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor. You could live your entire life and never hear a
piece by Reynaldo Hahn, a composer born in Venezuela to German parents and who lived in Paris at the turn of the
century. And by the way, in additional to his compositional gifts, he was an exceptional pianist, singer, conductor and
music critic, and for good measure, the lover of Marcel Proust.
So it seemed logical Hahn’s Quintet would be some lightweight oddity that would provide a little relief to the real
music by Debussy and Ravel. Instead, Lin, taking charge from the first violin position in an ensemble that also included
violinist David Coucheron, violist Cynthia Phelps, cellist Desmond Hoebig and pianist John Novacek, made a serious
case that the Quintet is a piece that deserves consideration in the standard repertory.
The bright, zesty piece had everybody’s full attention. The ensemble was impeccable in the first movement, focused
and furious, as befits a Molto agitato e con fuoco. Hoebig warmly spun out the cello solo that opened the second
movement while the first violin sat out the entire opening section of the second movement, finally entering with the
movement’s exquisite second theme. It was unconventional, dramatic, and surprisingly effective. The third movement
seems to take up where the first left off, ending the piece in high spirits.
Lin was not going to be denied in the Hahn, and his colleagues took a similar attitude in the rest of the program.
As she did Saturday, Priti Gandhi filled in for Charlotte Hellekant, who had visa issues and could not travel to the U.S.
But where Gandhi was impressive Saturday, she still sounded as if she was singing someone else’s program. Sunday,
she made Debussy’s “Chansons de Bilitis” her own, seeming to genuinely enjoy the French and making the musical
journey from innocence, to experience, to disillusionment completely believable. Novacek, who on Saturday sounded
as if he was someone else’s piano accompanist, was flawless Sunday, providing Gandhi with both support and the
slightest prodding when necessary.
Novacek also proved to be a sensitive collaborator with clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, whose compelling interpretation of
the “Rhapsodie” for Clarinet and Piano had an almost improvisatory feeling to it.
Yeh returned to the stage at the end of the concert for Ravel’s “Introduction and Allegro” with harpist Deborah
Hoffman, violinists Coucheron and Bram Goldstein, Phelps, cellist Eric Han and flutist Demarre McGill.
Here it was Coucheron who stepped forward, but also McGill and Yeh, who were ideally matched. The ensemble’s
attentiveness and cohesiveness allowed Hoffman to take off on her own rhapsodic flights in this mini-harp concerto,
and the effect was transporting.
Cho-Liang Lin
San Diego Union-Tribune August 22, 2010
page 2 of 2
Hoffman, Phelps and McGill also collaborated in a poignant, highly affecting rendering of Debussy’s Sonata for Flute,
Viola and Harp, a work that showed an entirely different side of the this “Impressionist” composer.
The only piece on the program that would have benefited from a little more leadership was Debussy’s “Danses Sacree
et Profane” for Harp and String Quartet. Here, the Hausmann Quartet (plus bassist Han Han Cho) seemed to be merely
accompanying Hoffman, rather than taking ownership of their role in the piece and giving her something to play off of,
as she did to in the “Introduction and Allegro.”
Still, the harpist and the ensemble captured the piece’s gentle, dance-like character. Lin didn’t promise the program
would be perfection, but he almost delivered on that as well.
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Ivry
hile classical music is a domain of eternal values, musicians themselves, as mere mortals,
necessarily belong to the history of their times. A violinist like the great Belgian master Arthur
Grumiaux (1921–86), whose laser-like purity of tone and pliantly sensitive musicianship on recordings
and in concert, charmed generations of listeners, had a career experience which is necessarily different
from a comparably gifted musician today. So it is impossible for Cho-Liang Lin, the American
violinist born in 1960 in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, a majestic violinist fully in the Grumiaux tradition, to
exactly reproduce the latter’s trajectory. The classical music recording industry is not what it was in
Grumiaux’s heyday, and so unlike his Belgian predecessor, Lin has yet to preserve his interpretations
of the solo works of Bach, or Mozart sonatas, and posterity will be the poorer for that. Yet Lin has
found ingenious and generous performance alternatives. Not least of these has been his stellar decade
as Music Director of La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, alongside his founding of the Taipei
International Music Festival (1997-2003) which Lin has good hopes of reviving by 2012.
16
LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY
SUMMERFEST
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Epstein
The tenth anniversary of Lin’s direction of
SummerFest, coinciding with his own half-century, is a
good milestone for taking stock of how this violinist has
expanded his musical horizons and development both as a
performer and human being in the past decade. Anyone who
has met Lin, or seen the 2007 Australian documentary film
“4” from Vast Productions/ ITVS International, in which he
is interviewed about Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, relishes
the quiet, low-key charm which he radiates. Lin’s hectic
educational path, from ardent studies with the demanding
Hungarian virtuoso Robert Pikler in the 1970s to the
pressure-cooker of the Juilliard School, where he was taught
by star-maker Dorothy DeLay, could easily have made him
into, like so many other violinists, a high-strung personality.
Instead, as we see in the film “4,” Lin retains serenely
unruffled good humor, even amid a raucous, extroverted
group of New York musicians gorging at the Upper West
Side mecca for smoked whitefish, Barney Greengrass’
“The Sturgeon King” delicatessen. Anyone who retains
reposeful tranquility at Barney Greengrass’ estaminet
possesses genuinely stellar self-possession. We can easily
understand how Lin comfortably fit into the many diverse
milieus he has thrived in, from demanding conservatories
to the circle of musicians surrounding the late Isaac Stern, a
cohesive group fondly nicknamed the “Kosher Nostra.”
As we know from Chinese landscape painting,
inner peacefulness does not equate with a lack of
expressivity, and the qualities that make Lin an ideal
festival director are closely allied to those which make him
a much appreciated teacher at the Juilliard School, and
since 2006, at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music
in Houston. A questing intelligence and emotional thirst
for more profound musical understandings have motivated
Lin ferociously over the past decade. I well recall talking
with Lin circa 2001 about the new-found pressure for
classical artists to record crossover works of all varieties,
which did not seem to be his own preferred path at the
time. Lin explained that it was a question of comfort and
familiarity, and in the ensuing ten years at La Jolla, he
has indeed grown more familiar with composers like Lalo
Schifrin, Astor Piazolla and Mark O’Connor who represent
both classicism and contemporaneity. Now Lin tells me:
“In my early 20s, anything beyond Stravinsky was too
touchy to contemplate, whereas now I feel more at ease.
[SummerFest ] itself was beginning to stretch and push the
envelope and we made a concerted effort to engage jazz
musicians and film composers, and audiences loved it.”
From the videos available on YouTube of live
renditions of Ravel and Bartók from the La Jolla Music
Society SummerFest, Lin visibly brings out the best in
his fellow chamber music performers, as an inspirational
colleague. Comfortably thriving as well in the community
of today’s composers is much rarer, for a musician who
happens to be a supreme interpreter of dead masters.
Last year’s SummerFest featured the world première of
a sonata for violin and piano by Paul Schoenfield, which
Lin describes to me as a “seriously terrific work, very
substantial, with typical allusions to Jewish music, bebop
jazz, and certain pop tunes. Its 1930ish jazz allusions do not
conceal a very serious structure.”
Other composers of today whom Lin has recorded
in recent years (see box of suggested listening below)
include Bright Sheng and Gordon Chin. Of the former,
Lin says: “Bright thinks of himself as a sort of Chinese
Bartók... Chinese composers are very mindful of history,
both in the past and today.” Gordon Chin, from Lin’s
native Taiwan, is a student of noted composers Samuel
Adler and Christopher Rouse at Rochester’s Eastman
School of Music. Lin premièred – and recorded for Naxos
– Chin’s Formosa Seasons, intended as a companion piece
to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. For a collegial musician like
SUMMERFEST
LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY
17
RECORDINGS
Lin, actually knowing composers as
people results in more sagaciously
humane perceptions about their
music. Take the married couple of
superbly gifted composers, Chen Yi
and Zhou Long, whose music Lin
has magisterially recorded for the Bis
and Delos labels, respectively. Of the
couple, both of whom were born in
China in 1953, Lin says with amusement:
“They’re polar opposites. [Chen Yi] is
very bubbly and outgoing, while Zhou
Long is very much the philosopher, with
pipe in hand.” Lin adds that Zhou Long’s
Secluded Orchid, which is on the Delos
CD label, is a “very philosophical piece,
whereas Chen Yi is very urbane,
eager to engage in all things that are
current, and can compose anywhere,
on an airplane, in a hotel room, or on
the bus, while Zhou Long must be
at home, at his desk, to write. The
two are a wonderful couple; I love
talking to them together, and usually
Chen Yi does all the talking.”
Their music is also captivating,
Lin continues, describing Zhou Long’s
scores as “very colorful, very evocative...
a little of Messiaen, a little Prokofiev but
very beautifully atmospheric.” Genuinely
relishing other people’s personalities, as
well as their works, is not necessarily a
given in the world of musical virtuosos,
some of whom barely acknowledge the
existence of other human beings, let
alone see composers as humans
possessing individual personalities.
In a famous anecdote, the
sometimes boorishly self-obsessed
master violinist Mischa Elman
so ticked off the Czech composer
Bohuslav Martinů, from whom he
had commissioned a concerto, that
18
when he asked Martinů to describe or characterize the new
work before its première, the composer limited himself to a
tersely unhelpful one-word reply: “Violin.”
By contrast, Lin’s perceptiveness and relish of
the way others behave and create has clearly inspired
his own, ever-evolving, musical expression. Some of
Lin’s recordings over the past decade have literally been
products of friendship, as when a former roommate
from his student days, violinist Kurt Nikkanen, asked if
he would sit in for a Naxos CD of the music of Steven
Gerber. Another Naxos recording, of a violin sonata by
the Austrian-born conductor/composer Georg Tintner,
Lin describes as a “filial obligation,” not towards Tintner,
whom Lin never met, but towards his teacher Pikler,
a friend and associate of Tintner’s when both lived in
Australia during the 1950s. Pikler was a student of the
string pedagogue Jenő Hubay, a Hungarian pupil of
Joseph Joachim, Brahms’ friend and colleague. Across the
generations, as if by magic, Lin has absorbed not just the
middle-European collaborative warmth of the chamber
music ideal, but also the humane emotional aspirations
which it incarnates.
On a personal note, a decade ago I wrote in an
article that it was time to abandon the nickname dating
back to Lin’s student days, “Jimmy,” and show the
man some respect due to an adult artist in his prime by
pronouncing his full name “á la chinoise.” More recently,
hearing Lin introduced on a 2009 Taiwan TV newscast, as
diffused on YouTube, I heard a name which sounds nothing
like the way I have been virtuously – and with a degree
of self-righteousness, I admit – saying his name all these
years, rather more like “Leeyin Zhow Leeang.” Given
Lin’s unfailing graciousness, I trust he will understand if
I abandon any attempt at “correct” pronunciation of his
name in a language of which I remain sadly ignorant, and
henceforth think of him instead as Jimmy, after all, as his
English-speaking admirers have done for lo these many
years.
©Benjamin Ivry
Benjamin Ivry is author of biographies of Ravel, Poulenc, and Rimbaud, and
translator of many books from the French, by authors including Gide, Verne,
and Balthus, most recently At Home with André and Simone Weil from
Northwestern University Press.
LISTENING IN ON CHO-LIANG LIN
A selective list of recordings highlighting the rich variety of Lin’s musical achievements during the past decade.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Zhou, Long. Spirit Of Chimes
Delos. 3397 [2009]
Gerber, Steven. Gershwiniana
American Classics Naxos 8559618 [2009]
Sheng, Bright. Spring Dreams/Tibetan Dance.
Naxos 8570601 [2009]
Tsontakis, George. Violin Concerto No. 1.
Koch International Classics 7680 [2008]
Tintner, Georg. Violin Sonata
Naxos 8570258 [2007]
LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
SUMMERFEST
Chin, Gordon. Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
Naxos 8570221 [2007]
Rouse, Christopher. Violin Concerto
Ondine 1016 [2004]
Yi, Chen. Momentum
BIS 1352 [2003]
Mendelssohn, Felix: Octet/Sextet
Delos 3266 [2002]
Weber, Carl Maria von. Chamber Music.
Delos 3194 [2002]
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
August 1, 2010
ow
Popular
hough he won't boast about it,
;ho-Liang Lin has a reputation that
insures SummerFest attracts top talent
-
y James Chute
RTS WRITER
Very year, La Jolla SummerFest music director Cho-Liang [.in writes a welcome let!r in the festival's program book.
Lit this year was particularly chalnging. With Lin celebrating his
ith anniversar y as the director of
le festival, which opens Friday at
is Museum of Contemporary Art.
an Diego, he was cncouragcCl to
lot his own horn (or Inaybe III his
Isc, play his own violin),
"I was urged by the senior staff
write something to recount my
:complishments, and I feel very
neasy about that," I,in said. "I think
x:omplishmenls are achieved sort
f naturally. I don't want to say, This
what I've done and look al. how
real it is.' I feel terrible about that.
>rt of chest-thumbing. I prefer to
link, 'Gee, 2010 is wrapped up,
c're ready to go on stage and play;
hat call do in 2011 that's even betrand more interesting?"'
Lin, who also turned 50 this year,
not someone to look backward.
e's one of the mosthighly regard I violinists in the world, regularly
°rforming with the tole orchestras
I the United States and abroad. He
,aches at the Jui11iard School and
Rice University. And he performs
ith the preeminent chamber music
'ganizations, from the C.halnbcr
lusic Society of Lincoln Center to
ummerrest, which he has helped
evate to national, even world-class,
atus.
Maybe he could be encouraged to
lump his chest .just a little bit.
"I don't want to brag about it, but
play all over the world, all over the
nlntry, in many chamber music
,stivals, ,uld I think on a regular,
)ncert night, La Jolla is as good as
aything I've experienced," Lin said
om Aspen, where he was performg and teaching last week. "There
a lot to be proud of."
Part of the secret to Lilr s success
I,a Jolla is his relationships. He
as the connections, the fliendships
u3 the reputation to get artists of
le caliber of cellist Lynn Harrell
SEE
Lin, E4
Music director Cho-Liang Lin. Richard Corman
Page 2
LIN
CONTINUED FROM E7
a
#}
IF
He'll be on stage
for half of the
festival's concerts
(on Au g. 8) or pianist Emanuel
Ax (oil
11) to come and
play for an auclionce that even
with a full house and people sitting on the stage rarely exceeds
500 people.
`.I've managed to bring many
of ill y colleagues to La Jolla."
said Lin, who is affeclionalrely
known as "Jimmy" throughout
the music world. "I think that is
a wonderful thing, where I can
hear them play, when the La Jol them play,
la audience call
and I get to make music with
them. IN'e're ver y lucky. These
colleagues are very much in
demand."
Is it luck or is it Lin?
"When I call agents, and I say
the phrase, 'anti my music d irector, Jimmy Lin ...,' everybody
knows him," said Christopher
Beach, the president of the La
Jolla Music Society, which produces SummerFest.
Carter Brcy, who balances
his position as principal cellist
of the New York Philharmonic
with an active chamber nulsic
career, has known Lin for nearly a quarter of a century, and
tries to make a point of coming
to SummerFest every year.
"Over the years I've played
a lot of festivals, but it's sort
of conic down to 011e or two,
and 1 always tr y to include
oil
very,
SummerFest
li
very short st," said Brey, who
performs Aug. 10, 11 and 14.
"It's because of the incredibly
consistent high level of playing
of the musicians, the incredible
beauty of the place, and the
long friendships i've developed.
It's just I place I feel very welcome in and I feel very at home
ill."
Chamber music is essentially
a musical conversation among
co ll eagues. And music festivals
like La Jolla, Aspen and Santa
Fe are built around brirnging in
musicians of a certain stature
Who may not normally play
togetheI' (or play certain I'epertoire together) in the course
of year. Chances are good you
are going to get a more lively
conversation among fi iends
than you are among strangers,
no ha tt er what their level of
musiciallship.
"With Jimmy, there's avery,
very high comfort level, but not
The free "SummerFest Under the Stars" performance is Wednesday.J e 2naKaj& yama
the kind of comfort where you
just siIlk Into doing somethiIlg
like you've clone it before," Brey
said. " Because Jinlnly is such an
accomplished instrumentalist,
and an experienced performer,
you are going• to be goading
each other into trying some-
thing special, and there's always
going to bean element of challenge in that. Tlie high technical
level is going to be taken for
granted."
Of the approximately 75 musicians who will come lhroI g h Li
Jolla over the next four weeks,
Lin will be the only, one (besides
the student aI'tists) to sta y for
the entire festival. When he's
not performing, he'll be in the
hall with his wife, Deborah Ho
Lin (a pediatric immunologist)
and 9-year 4old daughter, Lara.
But just as often, he'll be on
stage, performing on half of the
festival's 14 concerts. And illll
many of those concerts, he' be
playing a secondary role.
in
"Play 4q second viol Is not a
problem," he said. "I do it Madly.
I consider myself a very good
second violinist. i grow up playing second vio li n to Isaac Stern.
'1'llat's not a bad thing to do."
Lin
has been playing the
li
vio n since he was 5, although
his father, a nuclear physicist.
who lived in Taipei, thought he
relight have some potential to
be a music criiIc or a historian.
But, as
Lin puts it, "my interest
li
in vio n overtook everything."
At age 12, he moved from
Taiwan toAustralia to take les-
sons with master violinist and
conductor Robert Pikler, and
then three years later to New
York, where he studied with
( h e. legendary Dorothy DeLay
for six years,
"Ak ith Miss Dei.av it was
about learning lea play the violin well," he said. "I often joke
with my co ll eagues, you can
go o11 stage filled wit musical
ideas, you can have the loftiest
interpretation in your mind,
Nit if you can't execute it on
your instrument, the performance is a failure."
Lin hasn't had much of that.
Wi le still in his teens, he made
his New York debut with the
Mostly M ozart Festival, and
aft er that, he never looked
back. His more than 20 recordings include chamber music
(some with Isaac Stern) and
the masterpieces of the solo
violin repertoire (many with
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los
Angeles Philharmonic for Sony
Classics).
But with the changes in the
recording industry, he finds
himself on a now, perhaps unexpected, path.
`Tile rea lity of the recording
market is you don't really get
Io record the war,I
horses anymore," he said. "All
of the companies have stopped
recording Beethoven, Brahms,
unless you have a special angle,
like original instruments, or
some sort of new edition. So
my attention has gone to contemporary music. It's a wonder-
ful sort of process of evolution
for me."
His position at It Jolla and
his stature as a concert artist have allowed hire to form
relationships with many of the
primary composers of our time.
This yew's festival includes new
works by B ri ght Sheng (oil
8) and by Chinary Ling, Wu
Man, Bre tt Dean and Christopher Rouse (all on Aug. 20) . He
also has a strong relationship
to Tan Dun, who recently wrote
a violin concerto for him. And
Steven Stucky and John Harbison are writing violin sonatas
for him.
"For me, it's a personal passion,"he said. "But also I fin d it's
a duty. If all the perfor mers ill
world stuck to only the warhorses, acrd stopped at, say; Stravinsky,
nobody would got to hear what's
written today. How will we know
what's good : ^0 or 80 years from
now? If the second Proko fi ev (violin) concerto, which is so beloved
now, didn't have (lascha) Heifetz
to push the piece in its early goings, that piece could have been
neglected. Even the Beethoven
violin concerto was neglected for
;I
lime after it was written.
li
1 be eve in the cause of a composer."
Like seemingly everybody
else, composers also believe in
Lin.
` A couple days ago I received
the completed score of a quartet
dedicated to me by John Williams (the Uscar-winning composer of numerous beloved fi lm
scores, including ` Stai-Wars"),"
Lin said. "And we will present.
that piece in the 2011 SunmlerFest.
"He wrote a very gracious,
beautiful le tter to me. I thought,
good lord, this is John Williams,
asking me for nay, opinion about
the music, and telling nee not
be shy about not playing it if I
didn't like the piece.
" I'm thinkil kq , conic on. I was
very touched."
Look for Lin to mention Williams' piece in his 2011 SummerFest welcome letter. Jus t .
don't expect him to toot his own
horn.
James Chute: jim.chute a uniontrib.
com ; (619) 293-1290
CHO-LIANG LIN
The Oregonian  July 24, 2010
Classical review: Schoenfield's sonata is a work of its time
BY JAMES MCQUILLEN
Paul Schoenfield's Sonata for Violin and Piano, co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest and given its
Northwest premiere Friday night at Kaul Auditorium, is a work of its time. For one thing, Schoenfield delivered it to
violinist Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Jon Kimura Parker via email in the form of a PDF file; like much of classical music
itself, the legends of manuscripts delivered with the ink still wet just moments before a premiere may be a thing of the
past.
More important, like the postmodern literature of David Markson that inspired the first movement (which borrowed the
title of Markson's novel Vanishing Point), it overflowed with fragmentary allusions. As Parker told the audience before
taking to the keyboard, the duo asked Schoenfield about the one of the more overt of these, a quote from Beethoven's
Fifth Piano Concerto, and the composer replied with a long list of all the pieces he'd mined for material: another
Beethoven concerto; works by Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among others;
and a variety of songs including "My Darling Clementine." In Parker's telling, the exchange recalled the familiar scene
in the old Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons in which Tennessee and Chumley consult Mr. Whoopee, who then opens the
door of his ridiculously overflowing closet to extract answers.
But the sonata also fit seamlessly in the program alongside works of Mozart, Schumann and Brahms with its rich
harmonic language, compositional rigor and traditional four-movement formal structure ending with an Eastern
European-influenced rondo. Schoenfield adeptly worked his gathered snippets into an engaging whole-on hearing the
piece, his enthusiasm for mathematics seemed unsurprising-and Lin and Parker played it as though it had been in the
repertoire for ages, negotiating the denser passages with ease and familiarity and helping to draw the disparate
references into unified, beautifully shaped phrases.
The Schoenfield was part of an evening of consistently exemplary chamber playing that began with Milan Turkovic
(former Vienna Philharmonic principal bassoonist) and Gary Hoffman in Mozart's B-Flat Major Sonata for Bassoon
and Cello. Opinions vary about Kaul's acoustics, but this combination worked especially well there, with every detail of
the fine phrasing and balance coming through clearly. Pianist Hyeyeon Park, one of the young artists invited this year
for mentoring and performance with CMNW, took the stage with clarinetist David Schifrin and violist Toby Appel for
Schumann's Märchenerzählungen ("Fairy Tales"), in a performance that captured nicely the sometimes naïve,
sometimes moody character of the infrequently performed pieces. Hoffman joined Lin and Parker for Brahms's C
Minor Piano Trio, a gorgeous, rhapsodic finale for the summer festival's penultimate program.
CHO-LIANG LIN
Epicurean Musician  July 2, 2010
String and Sip: The Finer Things in Life
Cho-Liang Lin is a man well-versed in the finer things life has to offer like music, wine, and Texas. As a worldrenowned, Texas based violinist, he has had the opportunity to travel the world and experience regions intimately
dedicated to the pleasures of exquisite music and vino. Born in Taiwan, the violinist is revered for the eloquence of his
playing and for the superb musicianship that marks his performances. Playing in the role of a journalist, he puts his
travel experiences to use in his wine column for a Taiwanese magazine. For Lin, the arts of music and wine are
intricately laced into a vision of beauty. One afternoon Lin chatted with EM about his musical journey and the cuisine
and wine he’s experienced along the way.
First Pluck
“I think there was some sort of innate passion for music when I was very little. My parents thought I showed a lot of
interest and passion; interest is one thing but then to actually execute well the violin is another so that part took a lot of
training and hard work and very adventurous travels. I went from Taiwan to Sydney when I was twelve in order to
further my musical studies and at age fifteen I traveled by myself to study at Juilliard in New York. These were very
important milestones in my early years.”
Wine and the perks of travel
“I love great food and wine, I travel the world and I get to taste a great variety of cuisine and try wines of different
sorts. I know patrons of music who take great delight in bringing very fine wines that I couldn’t get in a normal retail
store to either the evening sessions or dinners. I get all these fringe benefits of wonderful food and wine and this is a
fantastic circumstance that I wouldn’t trade for anything. For me, it’s very unique and it’s very beautiful.”
The art of writing wine
Lin: “I am just finishing an article. You might have read this book called The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin
Wallace. It’s about forgery or possible forgery of some very, very expensive wine, Château Lafite Bordeaux, that was
owned by Thomas Jefferson. I compared that to a scandal raised by a conservator of the Metropolitan Museum who
raised questions about the authenticity of one of the most famous Stradivari violins in the world about 10 years ago.
So, it’s about the difficulty of authenticating ancient wines and ancient music, the challenges and the various scandals
that evolved from these two particular events. The next column I’m going to write will be one about Domaine de la
Romanée-Conti and the tasting there. And one about my foodie experience in Burgundy.”
Cho-Liang Lin
The New York Times  May 5, 2010
Works Made on the Wings of Inspiration
BY VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
Richard Termine for The New York Times
Deadlines, poverty and ambition have long been motivating factors for composers, as for many artists. But according to
the program book for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s concert at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday afternoon,
the featured works were not driven by prosaic concerns but composed “on wings of pure inspiration.”
Dvorak was inspired to write his Sonatina in G for Violin and Piano (Op. 100) after visiting Minnehaha Falls in
Minnesota, where he is said to have scribbled a melody on his shirt cuff; he used it in the Larghetto. The work, which
Dvorak composed for two of his children (aged 10 and 15), weaves echoes of folk tunes and black and American
Indian songs into its four movements. The pianist Jon Kimura Parker and the violinist Cho-Liang Lin played it
graciously and with considerable charm.
Paul Schoenfield, in his engaging Sonata for Violin and Piano, which received its New York premiere on Sunday, also
draws on various strains, like jazz, pop music and folk traditions. The four movements — “Intermezzo,” “Vanishing
Point,” “Romanza” and “Freilach” — deftly encompass Gypsy fiddling, a Transylvanian wedding song, Baroque
counterpoint, snippets of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and dance hall music.
The harmonically rich “Intermezzo,” an elegiac violin melody, elegantly played here by Mr. Lin, unfolds over low,
dissonant rumblings in the piano. Mr. Lin and Mr. Parker performed the often virtuosic piece with commitment,
finishing with a bang in the propulsive “Freilach.” (The Yiddish term denotes a joyous song or dance.)
Cho-Liang Lin
The New York Times  May 5, 2010
page 2 of 2
William VerMeulen, on French horn, joined Mr. Parker for Schumann’s cheery Adagio and Allegro in A flat for horn
and piano, a short work written during a healthy and productive period in Schumann’s life. Mr. VerMeulen fumbled a
few of the more difficult passages but otherwise offered a spirited performance.
The program concluded with Brahms’s Trio in E flat for horn, violin and piano, written during a working holiday in
Baden, a spa town near Vienna. The musicians offered a nuanced performance, and Mr. Parker played with
particular sensitivity in the opening of the third-movement Adagio.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performs Beethoven’s violin sonatas on May 13 at the Rose Studio, Rose
Building, 165 West 65th Street; (212) 875-5788, chambermusicsociety.org.
CHO-LIANG LIN
The Straits Times  March 2, 2010
Bach to Mozart
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
CHO-LIANG LIN, Violin & Conductor
Sunday afternoon concerts at Victoria Concert Hall mean one thing: chamber music with the Singapore Symphony
Orchestra. For the second successive year, the orchestra’s partnership with Artist-in-Residence Cho-Liang Lin bore
abundant fruit in its well-run and well-attended chamber series. The Taiwanese-American violinist is an inspiring
musician who leads by example.
Just ten string players with harpsichordist Shane Thio produced a full and robust sound for Bach’s Third Brandenburg
Concerto. Lin doubled as sometime soloist and leader, and the ensemble reveled in the music’s sprightly rhythms, a far
cry from those ponderous big orchestra renditions of the LP era. He also crafted a short improvisation for the supershort second movement, before launching into the contrapuntal paradise of the finale.
Haydn’s Violin Concerto in C major benefited from Lin’s vigorous double-stopping and singing tone, bringing much
purpose and poise to this transitional work that bridged the baroque and classical eras. The Adagio was a wellspring of
sheer lyricism, played over a gentle plucked string accompaniment while the virtuoso came out for the third
movement’s perpetual motion.
Laying down his violin, Lin (left) conducted the second half of the concert. The
ability to evoke pathos and deeply felt emotions is a privilege of stringed
instruments, and seldom has Grieg’s Two Elegiac Melodies resounded with such
vividness. Ethereal violins and mellow cellos all played their part, ranging from a
mere whisper to a full-throated cry from a wounded heart.
Two French horns and two oboes entered the fray for Mozart’s early and graceful
Symphony No.29 in A major. Victoria Concert Hall seems like the perfect stage for
this slender work. The performance was suitably small-scaled, quaint and even
dainty, but never lacking in intimacy and refined nuances. The serenade-like slow movement would have been lost in
Esplanade Concert Hall’s cavernous ambience, more suited for the behemoths of Bruckner and Mahler.
The concert closed in high spirits, with a playful minuet and joyous romp of a finale that recalled the jaunty tempos of a
foxhunt. For those who missed this peach, there remains one more chamber Sunday on 11 April before the Vic closes
for a major overhaul.
Cho-Liang Lin
Salt Lake Tribune  February 19, 2010
Review: Lin’s recital is the epitome of charm
BY CATHERINE REESE NEWTON
String-popping pyrotechnics were in short supply at Cho-Liang Lin's recital on Thursday. Instead, the violinist's
cheerful, understated program bespoke another kind of confidence as he charmed a good-size Libby Gardner Concert
Hall crowd -- one that included several of Salt Lake City's top string players as well as former Utah Symphony music
director Keith Lockhart -- with his sheer musicality.
As Lin indicated in a pre-concert interview, a thread of good humor ran throughout the evening. Stravinsky's "Suite
Italienne," an arrangement of themes from his Pergolesi-inspired ballet "Pulcinella," led off. Lin is one of the most
elegant violinists around, spinning out long, legato lines with an almost uncanny smoothness. But he also revealed
flashes of Stravinsky's mordant wit; some of the commedia dell'arte -inspired passages had an acerbic edge. His nimble
technique was on charming display in the suite's feverish, infectious tarantella movement. Pianist Akira Eguchi, a
longtime friend but brand-new recital partner, matched him step for step.
Brahms' A Major Sonata and Dvorák's G Major Sonatina followed. These two composers often are paired on concert
programs, and their works on Lin's recital shared an amiable, songful sensibility. Both of them showed off the
violinist's ability to pivot deftly between shadow and sunshine. Both works also featured a substantial piano part that
further showed off Lin and Eguchi's compatibility.
Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Piano allowed Lin to display a wider range of musical colors, as he moved easily from
the gentle opening movement to the fittingly named "Blues" to the fiery perpetual motion of the finale.
Lin cut loose a bit in his effortless-sounding encore, William Kroll's cheerful "Banjo and Fiddle."
Cho-Liang Lin
The Salt Lake City Tribune • February 12, 2010
Cho-Liang Lin: Strings tuned to joyful sounds
Guest musician Cho-Liang Lin presents a bill of what he calls jazzy, beautiful works.
BY CATHERINE REESE NEWTON
Humor might not be the first word that pops into your mind at the mention of a violin recital, but Cho-Liang Lin says
that's what listeners can expect from his performance in Salt Lake City this week.
"One thing these pieces have in common is that they're all very funny pieces, very positive and joyful," Lin said in a
phone interview from Houston, where he is on the faculty at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music.
On the program are Stravinsky's "Suite Italienne," taken from his neoclassical score for the ballet "Pulcinella"; Brahms'
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major; Dvorák's Op. 100 Sonatina; and the Ravel Violin Sonata.
"Suite Italienne" is unusual because it's so retro, especially for Stravinsky, Lin said. It is based on music attributed to
18th-century composer Pergolesi and "sounds kind of Baroque," the violinist said. "If you'd never heard 'Pulcinella' or
the 'Suite Italienne,' I'd probably wager that a well-informed listener might have a hard time placing it [as Stravinsky].
It's immediately very tonal ... yet it has piquant harmonic and rhythmic touches that could only come from someone
with as great a skill, or set of skills, as Stravinsky."
The Brahms sonata is "almost self-evident in its beauty," Lin said. "It's not dark and stormy like the D Minor sonata
that followed it. It's so lyrical. ... [Brahms] was evidently in a very good mood. It has a good-natured, amiable quality."
Lin said it's a funny coincidence that the Brahms and Dvorák works on his program were the 100th published works by
their respective composers, but neither makes a grand statement. "They're both very intimate," he said. Dvorák wrote
the sonatina with his children in mind, and "it can't be any sunnier or more beautiful."
The Ravel sonata that closes the program "is one of the standard violin pieces," Lin said. "It's colorful, jazzy, brilliantly
written ... a new set of colors."
Lin has performed several concertos with the Utah Symphony, dating back to the Varujan Kojian years in the early
'80s. It's been nearly that long since he gave a Utah recital. "I wish I could do more recitals," he said. "A full-length
recital is not only the most enjoyable for me, it gives the audience a much stronger sense of how I play and interpret
works, much more than a concerto."
His current tour consists of two dates: one in Aspen, Colo., where he has been a regular at the resort's summer festival,
and the evening at Libby Gardner Concert Hall. His recital partner will be Akira Eguchi, whom he said he has long
known as "an incredibly nice person -- effusively so."
Even so, the two hadn't played together until a couple of years ago, when Eguchi stepped in on two days' notice at a
Carnegie Hall recital with violinist Gil Shaham and cellist Lynn Harrell after pianist Yefim Bronfman's father died.
"Akira stepped in, learned the entire program and played brilliantly," Lin said. "We barely had time to rehearse, and
Cho-Liang Lin
The Salt Lake City Tribune • February 12, 2010
page 2 of 2
apparently he didn't sleep for those two days. To play in New York City at a major venue and come through with flying
colors -- I've wanted to play with him again ever since."
Lin said he has many fond memories of Salt Lake City -- playing with the Utah Symphony, catching up with musical
friends, visiting the Peter Prier violin shop -- but one experience stands out. Staying at the Hotel Utah, he inadvertently
left all his cash in the desk of his room. When he called the next morning, hotel management told him the housekeeping
staff had turned in the money and asked for his address so they could send him a check. "It was really wonderful
service," he said.
Lin lives primarily in Houston with his wife, pediatric immunologist Deborah Ho Lin -- whom he met when she was a
page turner at one of his concerts -- and their 9-year-old daughter, Lara. Between concert engagements and his duties at
Rice, he teaches at New York City's Juilliard School of Music, where he came to study with the legendary Dorothy
DeLay at age 15. Lin was born in 1960 in Taiwan and began studying violin at age 5.
"My parents didn't expect me at all to become a professional musician," he said. "I was pretty motivated, but they were
as far from stage parents as possible." His nuclear-physicist father thought music was a nice hobby, but historian or
writer would be a more likely vocation. As for Lin's own daughter, she studied violin for about a year but has switched
to piano.
Cho-Liang Lin
The Dominion Post  April 6, 2009
Prokofiev would have been pleased
BY JOHN BUTTON
The programme of the first New Zealand Symphony Orchestra afternoon concert I can recall was a mixture of the
straightforward, colourful and extroverted, book ending the elegant pastiche of Prokofiev's 1935 Second Violin
Concerto.
This melodic flashback to the Classical Symphony and the eloquent lyrical qualities of his Lieutenant Kije composed a
couple of years previously, might been seen as a conscious effort to satisfy the Soviet demand for comprehensible
people's music.
This is credible given that Prokofiev was planning his return to Russia, but the passing of time might suggest that he
was merely following his most basic instincts.
Whatever, I'm sure the composer would have loved this performance.
Cho-Liang Lin is one of the most elegant and graceful violinists before us today, and his playing, and that of the
orchestra, was a model of style, clarity and real affection.
Ravel's brilliant orchestration of Mussorgsky's piano work, Pictures at an Exhibition, is one of the great audience
favourites, and it here received a performance of no-nonsense virtuosity.
There was not a lot of atmosphere, but some absolutely dazzling playing, particularly from the woodwind and the
superb percussion section.
But wouldn't it be nice - just once in while - to hear one or other of the 20-plus alternate orchestrations of the work?
The concert opened with the suite John Psathas made from his music for the opening ceremony for the 2004 Athens
Olympics. Olympiad XXVIII is fine ceremonial music, I suppose, but heard in the concert hall it just sounded like
generic film music, suitable for any number of Hollywood big-budget movies.
The New Zealand Herald 30/03/2009
News Page 18
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Cho-Liang Lin
Santa Barbara Independent  March 12, 2009
Chamber Orchestra with Schub at the Lobero
BY JAMES DONELAN
Photo by Paul Wellman
Cho-Liang Lin wears black the way Johnny Cash did—the music stands out more when the clothes are dark. When he
took the stage last Tuesday, he didn’t bring a baton, but his hands, his eyes, and his body told the SBCO everything it
needed to know about Elgar’s Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op. 20. A glance said, “Keep it clear and simple;” a
wave told them, “Make this phrase grow slowly;” a shrug cautioned, “ease off on the end;” and they understood. The
serenade ebbed and flowed thoughtfully, going to greater depths than usual.
The mood changed suddenly when Andre-Michel Schub arrived, beaming and nearly jumping for joy as he sat down
for the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488. This very familiar concerto began majestically, and then
became more and more playful as Schub’s sense of humor intruded on its well-known melodies, culminating in a very
funny pause in the cadenza. The work was over too soon, and both Schub and Cho-Liang Lin grinned in triumph.
After the intermission, the SBCO returned to play Schubert’s Symphony No.6, D.589, known as the "Little C Major," in
contrast to Schubert’s other C Major symphony, No. 9, known as the “Great.” The symphony, in Cho-Liang Lin’s and
the SBCO’s capable hands, didn’t seem little at all, although it did land somewhere between Beethoven and Mozart in
the balance between bold themes and symmetrical, elegant melodies. This symphony, little or big, has many surprises:
Cho-Liang Lin
Santa Barbara Independent  March 12, 2009
page 2 of 2
a tiny motif suddenly leaps to full volume; simple melodies take sudden sharp turns. The SBCO brought them all out,
clear and full of light, shining against the background of a dark night in late winter.
Cho-Liang Lin
The Denver Post  February 8, 2009
Violin soloist, conductor pair elegance, flamboyance
BY SABINE KORTALS
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a mere teenager in 1775 when he composed his Violin Concerto No. 4 — a technically
intricate and musically brilliant work.
With soloist Cho-Liang Lin and guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero on the podium, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra
provided a sensitive, stimulating accompaniment to the concerto. Surprisingly, the unisons and octaves between the
solo and orchestra parts resounded beautifully throughout the acoustically dull Boettcher Concert Hall, and Lin's
luminous rendering of the Andante cantabile slow movement was graceful, elegant and entirely engaging.
The Taiwanese-American violinist progressed effortlessly through the lighthearted Andante grazioso finale, with
Guerrero closely minding its energizing modulations in meter and tempo. The rolling and often mercurial conclusion
brought the audience to its feet — but while Lin's dependable, refined musicality is always enriching, it was Guerrero
who claimed the highest marks for Friday night's artistic success.
The Costa Rican maestro is all fire and flamboyance; there's nothing understated about his impassioned style. A tall,
formidable presence, he jumped, danced and amusingly cowered his way through Gioachino Rossini's overture to "The
Barber of Seville" and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.
Guerrero maintained restraint in tempo but simultaneously inspired unfettered, vigorous playing from the CSO
throughout the swashbuckling, high-spirited overture. And in Tchaikovsky's titanic, often thunderous symphony,
Guerrero proved himself a keen interpreter of the work's insistent, impactful first movement.
The pensive second movement and whirling, celebratory pizzicato scherzo presented a canvas on which Guerrero
boldly painted his vivid exclamations of quiet elation and overt joy, leading up to the symphony's effective zenith in the
defiant, victorious finale.
The evening also featured radiant solo passages performed by oboist Peter Cooper and bassoonist Chad Cognata.
Cho-Liang Lin
South Florida Classical Review  October 15, 2008
Chamber Music Opener a Memorable Night
BY LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON
Chamber music is often defined as music among friends, which generally refers to the performers. That description took on a
different, larger context with the season-opening concert of Friends of Chamber Music of Miami, which presented the piano
quintets of Schumann and Brahms. Schumann was a close and influential mentor to the young Brahms who also enjoyed a
lifelong friendship with Schumann’s widow Clara, which profoundly influenced his life and music.
FOCM president Julian Kreeger corralled an impressive all-star lineup of musical firepower for this program: violinists Cho
Liang Lin and Adele Anthony, violist Roberto Diaz, cellist William De Rosa and pianist Joseph Kalichstein. The event, held
Monday night at Gusman Concert Hall, was a co-presentation with Festival Miami.
Schumann’s Piano Quintet was written in 1842, his annus mirabilis chamber-music year, in which he completed three string
quartets, the Piano Quartet, and Piano Quintet.
The rush of inspiration and confident vitality is evident throughout in Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat Major, the first in
the form to achieve artistic success and still one of the finest of the genre. The writing is deftly deployed among all five
players, with key expressive contrasts and extraordinary lyrical richness. A hearty, vigorous expression predominates, and
even the second movement’s funeral march never quite veers into tragedy, with a first trio that is one of Schumann’s most
indelible inspirations.
Even though these five musicians had not played together before as an ensemble, there was clear musical empathy and a
sense of fully engaged partnership, which contributing to an idiomatic, impassioned performance in touch with Schumann’s
vitality and flowing lyricism.
In addition to providing brief, charming verbal notes, Kalishstein took the pivotal role in the proceedings with fiery keyboard
work, well balanced by Lin’s purity of tone and seamless articulation, and Roberto Diaz’s elegance.
Unlike the Schumann work, Brahms’ Piano Quintet went thru a characteristically tortuous gestation from string quintet to
sonata for two pianos, and finally, with Clara Schumann’s urging, its final form.
Brahms’ Piano Quintet is an expansive work, spanning three-quarters of an hour, and sprawling in its breadth and thematic
richness, with a Schumann-esque Andante, biting scherzo and large-scale finale that moves from brooding gloom to frenzied
exultation.
Gleaming and responsive as the Schumann performance was, the Brahms was finer still. Perhaps Adele Anthony seemed a
bit reticent compared to her high-powered colleagues, and Kalichstein’s unbridled attacks sometimes sacrificed accuracy.
But these are minor quibbles and this galvanic performance—weighty in texture and grand in scale—was tackled with fulltilt commitment by the entire ensemble.
Led by Lin, the delicacy of the string playing conveyed the plaintive folk-like expression of the slow movement. With
Kalichstein primus inter pares, all five musicians were at their finest in the scherzo, putting across the march theme’s forceful
swagger, and bringing explosive bravura to the finale, culminating in a thrilling coda.
Friends of Chamber Music’s next performance isn’t until January but the glow from this memorable evening should keep
audience members satisfied till then.
Cho-Liang Lin
Honolulu Advertiser  September 14, 2008
‘Ring Without Words’ wows symphony audience
BY RUTH BINGHAM
On Saturday night, violinist Cho-Liang Lin delivered a luminescent performance of Prokofiev's Concerto No. 2, but it
was the Honolulu Symphony's "Ring Without Words" that captured the audiences' hearts.
(There is another performance Sunday, see information below).
The "Ring Without Words" is conductor/composer Lorin Maazel's arrangement of Wagner's "Der Ring des
Nibelungen," a cycle of four operas that constitutes one of the monuments of classical music.
Although numerous passages from Wagner's "Ring" have entered popular culture (remember Bugs Bunny and Elmer
Fudd in "Kill da Wabbit"?), the cycle's length – over 15 hours of music – precludes intimate familiarity for most
people.
In order to make the music more accessible, Maazel condensed the cycle into about an hour of instrumental highlights
in chronological order, beginning with the dawning measures of the first opera, "Das Rheingold," and ending with the
apocalyptic fall of Valhalla in the last, "Gotterdammerung" (The Twilight of the Gods).
Because Maazel was so careful to change as little as possible, the result is less an arrangement than a medley – a
succession of loosely connected well-known pieces, along the lines of "Greatest Hits." In fact, when Maestro Andreas
Delfs announced the piece last spring, he characterized it as "all the best parts, with all the boring bits left out."
For those who know the "Ring" cycle well, memory will likely fill in the missing parts, so that the medley may feel as
though someone were fast-forwarding through, pausing now and then to enjoy a favorite passage. For those unfamiliar
with the story or familiar with only one or two pieces, the medley may sound more like a series of disjunctive sections.
In Maazel's version, climaxes arrive out of nowhere, without the tides of momentum Wagner built for them; lyrical
passages have no contextual fabric or follow-through; and transitions are unapologetically audible, announcing each
scene shift.
"Ring Without Words" is mostly just good fun, but it also allows listeners to enjoy some of Wagner's greatest music,
much of which is rarely heard in a concert hall. On Saturday, there were occasional glitches and phasing problems, but
Delfs and the Honolulu Symphony played with such enthusiasm that their rousing performance brought most of the
audience to their feet for the ovation.
The audience seemed less impressed by violinist Lin's performance in the first half, even though it was inspiring.
There was a time when Lin played the piece quite differently, more conventionally: he first modeled his interpretation
on a fellow artist's "propulsive, driven" performances of Prokofiev, which were widely acclaimed. But during a fourperformance run in Philadelphia, Lin listened to a recording of his first night and realized, "This is all wrong – I'm
playing it so aggressively. I had to completely modify my approach. [The Violin Concertos] are so lyrical."
Lin's performance on Saturday was indeed exceptionally lyrical, partly because of the beauty of his phrasing, but also
because of the quality of his sound.
Cho-Liang Lin
Honolulu Advertiser  September 14, 2008
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That sound may partly have been because of his instrument, a Stradivari called the "Titian" and made in 1715, but it
mostly reflected Lin's belief that a violinist's timbre is unique.
"All musicians must have a sound in their head in order to produce it, and it is the job of a great teacher to show them
how to get it out. Probably ninety percent of my sound production came from Dorothy DeLay," Lin's teacher at
Juilliard School of Music and one of the most acclaimed teachers of her generation.
Lin's vehicle, Prokofiev's Second was wonderful in many ways: it had beautiful, folk-song-like melodies and a melting
middle movement, demanded an impressive technique from the soloist, employed a charming varied-echo
developmental technique, and climaxed with a vivid, quirky, irregularly angular and Stravinsky-esque final movement.
For all that, however, it was not a showcase work. Lin's part was so fully integrated with the orchestra's that the two
seemed to meld, and Lin's pyrotechnics were often relegated to accompaniment, overshadowed by orchestral melodies.
Nonetheless, Lin's playing was outstanding, and his interpretation was an eloquent lesson on Prokofiev.
Cho-Liang Lin
Santa Barbara Independent  November 29, 2007
VIOLIN MASTER
BY CHARLES DONELAN
Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, featuring Cho-Liang Lin
Although it may seem incongruous to imagine, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an excellent violinist and
wrote his violin concertos in much the same spirit as his piano concertos — as works that could be conducted by
the soloist. Cho-Liang Lin was the guest conductor for Tuesday evening’s concert of the Santa Barbara Chamber
Orchestra, and listening to him play Mozart’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 4 in D Major — while
watching him conduct — gave a good sense of what it might have been like to see Amadeus pick up the fiddle and
use it as a baton.
Lin has lightness and technical virtuosity to spare, and he puts it all in the service of the music. This is one
of the most familiar of all of Mozart’s works, and virtually every violinist in the orchestra must have played it at
one time or another, yet you could see the unfeigned interest on all their faces as they studied Lin’s ringing, yet
subtle, performance. Lin is a close associate of Maestro Heiichiro Ohyama’s, and has succeeded him as artistic
director of the prestigious La Jolla SummerFest. His extensive experience as a conductor and a deviser of
programs — he also directs a large annual festival in Taiwan — showed in the relaxed, confident way he wielded
his musical authority from the podium.
Putting aside his violin, Lin showed his fluency as a conductor in a more modern idiom on the subsequent
piece, Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. The orchestra gave a delicate, focused account of this charming work,
which is based on a German lullaby and includes some beautiful writing for horn and winds.
The evening’s finale was the first symphony of Beethoven, always a welcome guest at any gathering, and
especially so with the Mozart concerto as its companion. The Mozartian aspects of the symphony were all there,
clearly etched in the sharper sound of the chamber orchestra. But the real excitement came in the third movement,
in which Beethoven playfully overturns any lingering 18th-century expectations with a whirling and lush scherzo
instead of the more standard form of the minuet. The orchestra was a model of balance and articulation throughout,
offering the audience another way to hear this great canonical work of the classical tradition.
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Atlanta Journal-Constitution  November 8, 2007
REVIEW: ASO Plays Funny German Music
By PIERRE RUHE
You see your kid everyday and don’t quite register the changes. Grandma visits every few months and,
first thing, exclaims, “How he’s grown!”
It’s the same with conductors. Donald Runnicles, as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest
conductor, visits Symphony Hall about four times a year — we hear his artistic development not as a
smooth progression but in substantial jumps.
Granny’s words were appropriate Thursday evening for the Scottish maestro’s first ASO appearance of
the season. His concert offered a pleasant theme: the playful side of the Austro-German tradition.
They opened with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, music of svelte, feline charm. There’s nothing heroic
or self-consciously “important” about the Fourth, which further enhances its greatness.
Under Runnicles’ baton, it sounded relaxed, thoughtfully prepared, properly rehearsed, beautifully
executed and, above all, playful. The Menuetto movement was as boisterous as a kitten swatting
repeatedly at a ball of yarn.
Their reading wasn’t note perfect — with a few mishaps of coordination and bassoonist Carl Nitchie
blurring a prominent solo passage — but in spirit the symphony soared, a joy to experience.
In Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3, Taiwanese-American violinist Cho-Liang Lin — “Jimmy” to his
friends — played the modest and dapper super-virtuoso. His tone was powerful and sweet, his every
phrase ideally turned, his restraint a sure sign of a (musically) noble pedigree.
Conductor and orchestra were of like mind and supported the violinist with a light, supple touch. The
whole thing seemed to float on a cushion of air.
Richard Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” from 1895, tells the tale, in graphic musical
imagery, of the Medieval German folk legend, a sort of nasty Robin Hood with a chip on his shoulder. In
this case, humor is no laughing matter.
Runnicles is expert in this music, he clearly adores it and treats it like a pinnacle of the orchestral
literature. For a while he had the rest of us believing it, too.
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Memphis Commercial Appeal  October 15, 2007
IRIS kickoff bold, solid
BY JON. W. SPARKS
The IRIS Orchestra's eighth season kickoff performance marked a new beginning grounded in its traditional approach.
The Iris Orchestra Foundation earlier this year assumed funding of the enterprise that had been largely financed by the
City of Germantown since its inception. That organizational move to independence is daring and still being cultivated,
but Saturday night's concert at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre was a performance as solid and bold as any in
the orchestra's previous seven years.
Maestro Michael Stern's selections were typically intriguing and varied and received warm responses from the near
sellout crowd.
Barber's Violin Concerto (1939) was at the center of the program and featured Cho-Liang Lin as soloist. Lin was
masterful, executing the passages with precision and clarity. The work itself is a bit odd as the first two movements are
undistinguished and maudlin forays, solidly constructed but as forgettable as a small picture of a grand landscape. The
third movement, however, is a rip-roaring journey as intellectually vigorous as the earlier movements were romantic
mush.
The opening work was the evening's real attention grabber. Osvaldo Golijov's Last Round for Strings, composed in the
1990s, was a tribute to the work of tango master Astor Piazzolla, but it was no mere tango tarted up to sound good in an
orchestral setting. It was, rather, a deliciously original composition with urgent dissonances constantly building up,
taking a breath and then building up again. Most of the musicians were standing as it's done in a tango orchestra, facing
each other across the stage to evoke the tension generated by dance partners.
Golijov, who descended from Russian Jews, was born in Argentina and has lived in Jerusalem and Brooklyn. That rich
worldliness inhabits his work and has made him one of the planet's leading contemporary composers. You could hear it
in the final moments of Last Round, where the frenetic brilliance moved into a disturbing resolution and ended on a
note of exquisite tininess.
The final work was the Brahms Third Symphony (1882-83) and it's hard to imagine a finer combination of the cerebral
with the passionate. Stern's admiration for the piece was clear. The four movements are solid as granite but permeated
with humanity -- and IRIS sounded so good in the hall that it distributed chills up and down the collected spines.
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San Diego Union-Tribune  August 10, 2007
SummerFest's tribute to Lin was revealing and uplifting
BY VALERIE SCHER
Violinist Cho-Liang Lin, the self-effacing music director of La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, was initially reluctant
to be the subject of a tribute program in a new series devoted to prominent performers.
Let's be glad he changed his mind.
“An Evening With Cho-Liang Lin,” presented Wednesday at La Jolla's Sherwood Auditorium in the Museum of
Contemporary Art San Diego, was a vibrant and richly faceted start to the lineup that features violinist Sarah Chang on
Wednesday and cellist Lynn Harrell on Aug. 22. If the other programs are as gratifying as Lin's, SummerFest will have
plenty of incentive to continue the format in future seasons.
What made Wednesday's concert so special was the way in which it illustrated Lin's gift for cultivating musical
collaborations. Though Lin performed in every piece on the program, there was never the slightest sense of ego-driven
one-upmanship.
“In this concert tonight, the common factor is actually friendship. I'm playing with a bunch of friends who are fantastic
musicians,” the 47-year-old New York-based virtuoso told the nearly sold-out audience, adding that “each piece was
written for a friend.”
Julian Milone's “Tales from 'The Magic Flute' (A Mozartean Divertimento),” for instance, was written for Lin, who's
now in his seventh year heading SummerFest. Though Milone could have done more to convey the charm and familiar
melodies from Mozart's opera, it's still an engaging, classically styled ensemble piece. And aside from a bit of iffy
intonation, Lin excelled at the melodic flourishes, recitativelike declamations and sonorous exchanges with his adept
colleagues, violinists Adam Barnett-Hart, Wu Jie and Joanna Frankel, plus bass player Chris Hanulik.
Yet nowhere was Lin's playing more superb than in Ravel's Violin Sonata No. 2 and Bartok's “Contrasts.”
In the Ravel, Lin was a marvel of sensitivity and precision, excellently partnered by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott.
He was attuned to the dreaminess of the opening movement, bluesy syncopations of the slow movement and rapid-fire
passages of the finale, which were nothing short of dazzling.
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San Diego Union-Tribune August 10, 2007
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The Bartok – commissioned by the composer's pal, violinist Joseph Szigeti, and clarinetist Benny Goodman – brought
out Lin's rhythmic vitality as well as his dexterity, as when he bowed and plucked his violin at the same time. He
received attentive support from McDermott and clarinetist Burt Hara, whose arpeggios rippled with smooth-toned
refinement.
As for Brahms' Sextet No. 2, Lin called it a “love letter” to the composer's former fiancée, Agathe von Siebold. Even if
the piece is a little long-winded, the passion was abundantly evident.
Lin brought a golden-toned ardor to the opening theme. Cellists Ralph Kirshbaum and Alisa Weilerstein reveled in
lustrous intensity. And the other performers – violinist Sheryl Staples and violists James Dunham and Che-Yen Chen –
contributed mightily to the lushly romantic interplay.
With more than a little help from his friends, Lin made his “Evening” memorable.
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Philadelphia Inquirer  January 10, 2007
Female leader lifts ensemble
By DAVID PATRICK STEARNS
Coincidences can be the best bellwethers: Though Marin Alsop's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra appointment was a
landmark in the evolution of female conductors, I'm equally impressed that this week at the Kimmel Center both
resident orchestras just happened to host female guest conductors. The Philadelphia Orchestra had Alsop through
Tuesday while the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia gave one of its best concerts under JoAnn Falletta on Monday.
To say that any guest conductor drew more from the Chamber Orchestra than music director Ignat Solzhenitsyn is
indeed a surprise. But to say that Falletta, who heads the Virginia Symphony and Buffalo Philharmonic, presided over
an excellent performance of Stravinsky's Suite from Pulcinella - a piece that signals train-wreck time for ensembles as
august as the Philadelphia Orchestra - is almost unthinkable, and in a performance that didn't seem particularly drilled
or disciplined. The players seemed to have the piece's big picture in their heads and simply assumed their proper roles
in the stylish, clean harmonies and idiosyncratic rhythms.
Same thing with the rest of the program, which included Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Concerto Grosso plus memorable concerto performances by Cho-Liang Lin.
The overall theme was fusions of music from distant centuries. Zwilich uses pre-existing themes by Handel as a
starting point from which the piece never quite departs. Unadulterated Handel is periodically heard in the clear before
being overtaken by Zwilich's own unmistakable harmonies, which suggest a pained mutation beyond Stravinsky's neoclassic period. The tension between the two was spellbinding. Handel's music was a vacation from reality; Zwilich
reflects the sting of life without stinging the ears. Among such collage-minded pieces, none is more elegant.
Vaughan Williams and Stravinsky were more inclined to integrate their source material. The latter inhabited themes by
the 18th-century Giovanni Pergolesi but made them do things only a 20th-century mind could devise. Vaughan
Williams brought his typical grave but rich harmonies to the 16th-century Thomas Tallis, who received conscious
backward glances with a Renaissance-era viol consort heard every so often. The Williams is often done with full
orchestra, but the Chamber Orchestra's 20-some players accounted perfectly well for the music in a substance-overeffect performance.
Violinist Lin has been less visible in recent years - he teaches at the Juilliard School and runs La Jolla SummerFest - so
in catching up with him, I was knocked out by what emotional presence he brings to smallish-scale works such as
Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 2 and Dvorak's Romance Op. 11. Phrase climaxes feel like bursts of sunlight.
Modulations in brighter keys feel like bells pealing. Now that's music making.
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Los Angeles Times  October 16, 2006
Lin soars on beauty of Bernstein
By DANIEL CARIAGA
A longtime visitor to local stages, violinist Cho-Liang Lin nonetheless made his first appearance with the Los
Angeles Chamber Orchestra over the weekend at the opening events of the ensemble's 38th consecutive season.
It was a gratifying debut too. Lin's relaxed virtuosity and pointed musicality - the Taiwanese American violinist
always seems to explore the depths of the music he plays - this time focused on the radiant beauties of Leonard
Bernstein's Serenade for violin, strings, harp and percussion from 1954.
He gave the piece all its many facets, assisted engagingly by conductor Jeffrey Kahane and the orchestra. Cellist
Douglas Davis was Lin's sensitive duo partner in the fifth movement. This became a revealing performance of one
of Bernstein's strongest works.
Music director Kahane, beginning his 10th season as leader of LACO, offered a premiere to open the program.
Gernot Wolfgang's "Continuum IV - Cascades" was commissioned and performed by flutist Susan Greenberg, a
longtime member of the orchestra. It is a gently dissonant, bright and aggressively amiable piece, alternately jazzy
and pastoral.
Greenberg negotiated its showy complexities effortlessly, playing alto flute, flute and piccolo with equal aplomb.
Kahane and the orchestra gave solid support.
The Saturday opening, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale - which was scheduled for repeat at UCLA on Sunday concluded with Schumann's beloved Second Symphony, performed with the orchestra's resolute accomplishment.
This reading moved along convincingly, all its parts in place, but without the full range of colors, inner voices and
the dynamics one knows the work contains.
Whatever the mood, this performance reproduced it mostly in a monochromatic and loud mezzo forte. There is
more here than met our ears.
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The Kansas City Star  April 1, 2006
Conflict and concord
Fine new double concerto thrives on collaboration
By PAUL HORSLEY
Music fans would be hard-pressed to name a local concert in recent memory that took on as many emotions and
ideas as the Kansas City Symphony’s concert on Friday.
Ecstasy, rage, yearning, despair, love, piety, mysticism — it was all there.
If the 2 1/2 -hour program in the Lyric Theatre tried to deliver too much for one evening, it was savvy in concept:
Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture No. 3, which opened the program, and Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, which
closed it, are both about the struggle for individual freedom over tyranny.
The Gordon Chin concerto, given its premiere in February of this year, was receiving only its second
performance. It is a powerful, ambitious piece that the orchestra is scheduled to record April 3 for commercial
release.
On hand were the soloists for whom Taiwanese composer Chin wrote the piece in 2002, violinist Cho-Liang Lin
and Felix Fan, who gave the lyrical and virtuosic solo parts a warmly committed performance.
Michael Stern had fully digested the 40-minute concerto and led the large orchestra — which included four
percussion parts — with a command that helped convince us of its validity.
It is in four meaty movements, each tidily structured and using musical language that swings from biting
dissonance to lush, Mahlerian tonality.
The orchestration is masterly, with such oddities as a gurgling water bucket, a “rain stick” producing a whooshing
sound and sheets of red and green paper ripped (in the movement called “A Flowering Sacrifice”) for the gentle
sound they make. (After ripping them into small pieces, the percussionists tossed them into the air like flower
petals.)
At the core of Chin’s language is long-breathed lyricism, bathed with a melancholy that made the concerto a good
pairing for Shostakovich.
Drama is created by the struggle between the soloists, who battle at times and join amiably at others. The opening
movement fed on driving asymmetrical rhythms and big melodies in the violin. The occasional moment of
concord between the two came as a sweet respite.
In the coloristic second movement, a sort of night piece, orchestral twitters converse with nervous soloistic
figures. Finally they sing a mournful tune in unison. “In Expectation” is a bright, compelling dance. The prolix
finale compresses ever more compactly the conflict between jagged edges (a diabolical percussion figure) and
sweet harmonies featuring the plaintive English horn.
After intermission, Shostakovich’s Tenth received a potently bombastic rendering, with excellent playing and a
good feel for tempos and mood swings. There was a strong sense of direction in the first movement, and excellent
clarinet and bassoon solos. The tour de force Allegro was suitably roaring, and the third movement’s enigmatic
stop-and-start was logically crafted. Fine oboe solos marked the finale.
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The Kansas City Star April 1, 2006
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This year marks Shostakovich’s centenary, and this is one of the few performances of his music we’ve heard here
lately.
The biggest success of the evening was the muscular, clear-eyed performance of the third “Leonore” Overture,
which again featured crisp string playing and fine wind articulation. New harmonic moments were marked by tiny
shifts of mood and dynamic, and the lusty fortissimos had a nice crunch.
Cho-Liang Lin
Pensacola News Journal  January 16, 2006
Guest violinist helps Pensacola Symphony soar to new heights
By ALBERTO HERNANDEZ
The Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Peter Rubardt, presented a romantic program on
Saturday of three great works by David Diamond, Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann, joined by the
remarkable violinist Cho-Liang Lin.
First came Diamond's "Music for Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet," a beautiful orchestral suite in five movements
depicting the story of the "pair of star-crossed lovers."
The orchestra's robust sound and syncopated rhythms immediately set the mood of conflict between the two
households. The lovers' dialogue in the balcony scene was beautifully portrayed by the violin and violas, later
joined by the trumpet and clarinet duo accompanied by the harp and cellos. A contrasting and delightful bouncing
movement between woodwinds and plucked strings announced Juliet and the nurse, but it went by fast like the
flash of a happy memory. The dark mood sets in again in the death scene by the slow beats of a funeral march.
The end of Juliet's despair and her last breath was effectively played by the flutist.
Then came "Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77." Lin's reading of the concerto was relaxed and intimate,
supported by an enviable technique and excellent intonation. The introduction of the Allegro non troppo was wellplayed by the orchestra, who established the appropriate lyrical mood that pervaded throughout the concerto. A
sudden change of pace introduced the evening's soloist, who offered the audience some passionate and rhapsodic
interpretation of the difficult passages that followed. At times he seemed to be an introvert player. There was no
question that he was in command, but he is also an artist who listens very carefully to what is being played by the
rest of the musicians and is stimulated by the idea of music making rather than by the tossing of notes into the air.
The brief Adagio, opened by the wind section of the orchestra, was led beautifully by a pair of oboes in a choralelike song without words. Lin took over the themes and reached the highest notes in a most tender and quiet
manner. His beautiful playing was characterized by a spontaneous and an almost improvisatory-like quality.
After the intermission, the orchestra provided an excellent performance of Robert Schumann's "Fourth
Symphony." The composition is very personal and romantic, with continuous changes of tempos and moods,
much like Schumann's own moods, at times cheerful and others melancholy.
The opening bars of the music, led by Rubardt, presented the tragic story in a most dramatic manner.
By contrast in the Romanze, the oboe and cellos led the ensemble into a tender song of love played admirably by
the musicians. The German dance-like third movement was contagious, with a very well-performed syncopated
waltz played by the woodwinds in the trio. After a slow mysterious introduction, the powerful brass choir
launched the vigorous presto, then into a faster and highly dramatic ending.
It was certainly an impressive performance.
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New Zealand Herald  November 7, 2005
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at Auckland Town Hall
By WILLIAM DART
Is it the Schoenbergian kiss of death, or perhaps a less-than-familiar violin concerto? Or might some have
preferred a kosher symphony to Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances?
Whatever the reason, the NZSO drew a meagre audience on Friday night and too many Aucklanders missed one
of the most enterprising concerts of its season.
Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces were a watershed in 1909 and Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu illuminated
each, from the linear intricacies of the first to the subtle timbral flux of the third - almost sabotaged by the claque
of coughers.
Cho-Liang Lin played Bernstein's 1954 Serenade as if it had been written for him. It's a powerful score, frank in
its emotions, bold in its mix of cerebral and visceral and Lin took my breath away with the charged tranquility of
his Adagio; Lintu threw himself into the final Bacchanale.
After interval, Lintu introduced us to the world of Finnish tango, although a full orchestra let loose on Toivo
Karki's "Taysikuu" is a little like taking an 18-wheeler on a nightclub jaunt.
Lintu summoned prodigious energies for Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. Fury abounded, with some
skydiving dynamic shifts, but there were also reflective moments. Rachel McLarin's saxophone solo sounded as if
Copland was folk song searching in the Urals.
After 35 minutes, the audience didn't wait for the final tam tam to fade before breaking into ecstatic applause.
Saturday's more conservative programme attracted the larger audience.
John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine had the orchestra pulsating and shimmying around the implacable
click of Bruce McKinnon's woodblock. It's a sensational opener, but why doesn't someone give us a major score
like Adams' Naive and Sentimental Music?
The Brahms Concerto was a transcendental experience in the hands of Cho-Liang Lin. From the first streaks of
fire to those final spiccato chords, Lin was superb, especially in the silken melodic arcs of the Andante.
Lintu and the orchestra were also terrific. The ensemble was tight, even if the conductor's podium language
sometimes seemed perilously non-specific.
Predictably, Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony was a crowd-pleaser. Lintu found new sonorous depths in the
opening pages and throughout made one less conscious of Tchaikovsky's patchy symphonic construction.
When the tempo relaxed in the first movement, the intensity didn't; the Finale was a rocketship, shedding
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New Zealand Herald  November 7, 2005
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boosters, tempo by tempo, until it escaped the Earth's gravity.
Concert FM is there for those who didn't get to these concerts. This Saturday, you can hear the Brahms
programme, live from Wellington's Michael Fowler centre, and next Monday there's Friday's Schoenberg,
Bernstein and Rachmaninov, from the Auckland Town Hall.
CHO-LIANG LIN
Cincinnati Post  March 21, 2005
Musical dream team performs at Linton Series
By MARY ELLYN HUTTON
Imagine sitting in a wood-paneled room, the setting sun casting shadows through stained glass windows, beautiful
music filling the air. That's how it was at Sunday afternoon's Linton Series concert at First Unitarian Church in
Avondale.
Performing Sunday was a musical dream team comprising violinist Cho-Liang Lin, pianist Helen Huang and
cellist Eric Kim in the Piano Trios Op. 1, No. 3, in C Minor by Beethoven and Opus 49 in D Minor by
Mendelssohn. There was a special event, too, the North American premiere of Viennese composer/conductor
Georg Tintner's Sonata for Violin and Piano.
Lin, world renowned violinist and distinguished guest artist at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory
of Music, has a special link to Tintner's work, which was premiered by one of his first teachers, Robert Pikler, in
Auckland, New Zealand in 1949. The Taiwan native studied with Pikler in Sydney, Australia before coming to
New York's Juilliard School in 1975.
"When I was studying with him, he told me about this wonderful violin sonata," said Lin, who first saw it when he
received a copy from the composer's widow last year (it was never published). He and Huang (already a star at
22) will record it as part of an all-Tintner disc for Naxos Records.
Music was a matter of life and death for Tintner, who jumped to his death from an 11-story balcony in Halifax,
Nova Scotia in 1999 (he was dying of cancer and could no longer conduct). The sonata is veined with passion,
explicitly so according to Tintner, who keyed its four movements to the emotions -- love, defiance, sorrow and
triumph. Tintner, who fled Nazi Germany, first to New Zealand, then Canada, rejected mid-century modernism in
favor of a heightened late romanticism.
The sonata opens with wide-ranging, rhapsodic flights for violin and big climactic statements in the piano (love).
The temper mellows a bit, yet remains warm and ravishing to the final, muted passage for violin.
Defiance (Allegro risoluto) is expressed through hard attacks by both instruments and persistent octaves -- double
stops in the violin, left hand octaves in the piano -- against overall turbulence.
Sorrow (Lentissimo) is overt, from impassioned runs and lots of pedal in the piano to plaintive echoes by muted
violin. Both instruments assert themselves in the finale (triumph), where the harmonies make one feel that a
traditional tonal language is going to break out, but is stretched to its limits instead, including a stratospheric high
note in the violin. Lin and Huang conveyed all this emotion vividly and with great skill.
The piano trios framed the program in the minor mode. Beginning softly but earnestly -- still waters run deep -the musicians put plenty of spark in the Beethoven. They drew energy from each other with their pinpoint timing
and exquisite communication. Huang skittered over the keys like waters over a spillway in the trio portion of the
Menuetto and Kim, principal cellist of the Cincinnati Symphony as well as a soloist and chamber musician,
captured every expressive nuance with his versatile tonal palette.
Beauty best describes the Mendelssohn, from Lin's elegant emotionalism to Huang's brilliant touch in the fleetfooted Scherzo. The final movement built to an exhilarating close, drawing the grateful crowd to their feet.
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The Washington Post  February 28, 2005
By JOE BANNO
The National Philharmonic, a second-tier orchestra that toiled for years at a multi-use auditorium in Rockville,
recently became a resident artistic partner at the new Music Center at Strathmore. As such, it has inherited the
much-needed acoustic benefits of the hall -- a balance that allows its fine wind players to register with clarity and
punch, and creates a halo around the string sound that erases minor imperfections and makes the orchestra’s
undermanned violin section seem much larger.
Not that the Philharmonic needed special help on Saturday night: It played far beyond its pedigree, boasting tight
ensemble, a silken finish to the strings and heartfelt solo work in the winds and brass. Conductor Piotr Gajewski
led an emotionally vital, expressively molded reading of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony, and the players
were with him phrase for phrase, even through the most mercurial shifts of tempo and dynamics.
Star soloist Cho-Liang Lin upped the prestige quotient even further with a deeply satisfying performance of
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. At expansive yet highly flexible tempos, and with painstakingly sculpted
phrasing, Lin honored the composer’s musical architecture as much as his singing line, setting some
breathtakingly played upper-string melodies against a throaty earthiness in the lower strings.
The orchestra gave Lin superbly alert, sensitively turned support. Indeed, if the Philharmonic continues to play at
this heady level, it will fully deserve the heightened exposure Strathmore is sure to give it.
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Miami Herald  January 13, 2005
Moscow orchestra salutes Tchaikovsky
By ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ
J'aime Tchaikovsky, a guilty love for a critic. He's so darn accessible, so loved by, ugh, everyone. Certainly by
the audience that nearly packed the Jackie Gleason for the Moscow Philharmonic Monday night. But who could
not fall in love hearing the gorgeous horn melody in the second movement of Symphony No. 5?
The Moscow opened with Capriccio Italien, an engaging yet complex trifle. Tchaikovsky is the Moscow's man;
after all, everything he wrote became a kind of national anthem -- his most famous, the 1812 Overture, is actually
a battle of the anthems. And the lustrous Moscow can match any Americans at forte -- conductor Yuri Simonov
milked sonorousness out of sudden silences.
Cho-Liang Lin, in the Violin Concerto in D Major, more than matched the “acrobatic” and “pyrotechnics” in the
program notes' description of the soloist's role. His third movement cadenza transformed the violin into a
speaking voice, and then moved way beyond speech.
The closing No. 5, with its one theme, gave the house a full ride that included melancholy, romance and triumph.
Pyotr T's compositions took no emotional prisoners, and the Moscow is his most powerful enforcer.
Who can blame, then, a fool for love?
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