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If you follow the news on our northern neighbors, you may be aware that there was a bit of a flap some time ago over toplessness in Ontario. This may come as a surprise to most of us who live south of the border, because we're not accustomed to thinking of Canadians as either naked or particularly contentious; what comes as a surprise to music lovers, however, is that this time it had nothing to do with Lara St. John. St. John, you may recall, is the young violinist whose recording of solo works by J.S. Bach precipitated something of a storm in the classical music world, a milieu whose climate is normally placid to the point of stagnancy. The cause of the controversy was the cover photo of the artist, who appeared in the beguiling half-light of a drawn Venetian blind wearing nothing but the violin she held over her breasts (a vast improvement, it should be noted, over what women in classical music regularly wear for their photo shoots), and directly engaging the eyes of the viewer ("Bare Bach," Culture Buzz, WW, Oct. 16, 1996). She still maintains, more than a year later, "I never did understand what all the hubbub was about." This may be an example of the sort of guilelessness we expect, rightly or not, from up north--and there's certainly nothing in her conversation or in her playing to suggest that she is anything but intensely straightforward. But to us in the United States, forever on the qui vive for the least suggestion of threatening sexuality, it should be fairly obvious. For one thing, it brings to classical music, bastion of the ancien regime, the marketing techniques of rock and roll--the genre that, according to culture warrior Allan Bloom, celebrates "onanism and the killing of parents." For another, the then-25-year-old musician appeared to be about 14, raising the same specter of adolescent sexuality that has kept the film Lolita out of American distribution. For all that it did to illuminate what the American public will and won't graciously allow in the way of classical music marketing, the Lara St. John cover story tended to obscure what is most important about her--she is an extremely gifted violinist. Her new disc, Gypsy, may also raise eyebrows--the cover photo shows her in an unbuttoned leather coat with nothing underneath, her tough yet still direct gaze marking a progression from nymphet to femme fatale--but it also provides further proof of her uncompromising musicianship. Musically, Gypsy is worlds apart from the Bach album in time and temperament; it is a compilation of mostly 20th-century pieces based on the forms and sounds of Gypsy music, which seems to have about as much in common with the high-minded German Baroque as bluegrass does with Beethoven. Even where the forms of Bach's music derive from dance, as in his solo suites and partitas, their passion (and there is ample passion, stock interpretations of the musical Baroque notwithstanding) is of a transporting, spiritual kind that resides in their extraordinary architecture; the Gypsy-inspired works of Ravel, Kreisler, Bartók and others are more frankly physical, whether lyrical, sultry or furious. In St. John's hands, though, one begins to hear a connection. Her interpretation of Bach displays a vocal sensibility in tone and phrasing, imbuing the music with a sensuality that seems at once unexpected and wholly right. "A certain trancelike state," as she puts it, is what she gets from playing Bach with intense concentration, and Gypsy music--though "more sensual, more physical"--has much the same effect. "With Bach, if you don't give it everything you've got, you don't get that feeling at the end. Gypsy music is similar." The pieces that make up Gypsy are largely of the kind commonly labeled "fiendishly difficult," with scorching accelerando passages, multiple stops and pizzicato on the fly. They show off St. John's dazzling technique to the point of suggesting that she's a musical dervish and moving her hands at blinding speed over four strings is her route to rapture. They are also melodically enchanting, with music both familiar--including Franz Waxman's suite from Bizet's Carmen--and not, as is probably the case with the arrangements of traditional Gypsy tunes by composer Ilan Rechtman, who also plays piano accompaniment on the disc. St. John lived in Russia for a year, where she had more than a passing acquaintance with Gypsy culture: "My best friend was a Gypsy, and we would go out of Moscow to the caravans and spend many a drunken evening until dawn.... These are people who live for the moment, as though tomorrow will never come." That's not exactly the sort of thinking one associates with J.S. Bach, who seemed to be able to think his way musically not just into tomorrow, but into eternity; his world and the Gypsies' could hardly be further apart. It is a testament to Lara St. John's intensity and skill that she can be equally convincing in both. |
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