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Lara St. John: Key of A | Beethoven Sonata #9 / Franck Sonata
by C. Michael Bailey
It is always a worthy question to ask when a pairing like Beethoven's notorious “Kreutzer" sonata with Franck's frankly demonic violin sonata, not to mention the inspired inclusion of Kreisler's “Schön Rosmarin," thrown in for giggles, is released. There is clever reasoning to programming both sonatas on the same disc and it is not simply that they were both composed in the key of A Major (though one could argue that the Beethoven orbits closer to A minor). There is ...
read moreLara St. John: Shiksa
by C. Michael Bailey
..."all this music from different countries and cultures pulled together and recorded by a random Canadian chick." And that is the charm of Lara St. John. One-time enfant terrible violinist Lara St. John has morphed into a beautifully iconoclastic and enigmatic cultural presence in the staid world of classical music. Things started off innocently enough with Bach. St. John made her way through three Bach-oriented recordings (Bach Works for Violin Solo (Well- Tempered, 1996), ...
read moreLara St. John and Marie-Pierre Langlamet: Bach Sonatas
by C. Michael Bailey
Can classical music performance be controversial? Most often, this is true only when a performance departs from contemporary (or not-so-contemporary) conventional wisdom, which often relies on both a uniform and blinding reverence to how “things ought to be." Every composer who ever put pen to parchment may have designated a specific instrument in a given piece, but that does not preclude the possibility of a different instrument playing that same piece. In fact, this is exactly how the composers of ...
read moreLara St. John, The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Eduardo Marturet: Vivaldi: The Four Seasons / Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
by C. Michael Bailey
Canadian cum American violinist Lara St. John is a classical maverick without peer. The scintillating Bach of her youth, Bach: Works for Solo Violin (Well Tempered Productions, 1996), gave way a decade later to her fully mature Bach of The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo (Ancalagon, 2007), and then to diamond-splendid Hindson, Corigliano, and Liszt (Hindson: Violin Concerto; Corigliano: Suite from the Red Violin, Ancalagon, 2008). A creatively restless spirit, St. John returns to the fold with a ...
read moreLara St. John / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sarah Ioannides: Hindson, Corigliano, Liszt/Kennedy/St. John
by C. Michael Bailey
After culminating a ten-year romance with Bach, Canadian violinist Lara St. John has turned her attention to more modern fare. Not content to record another “Tchaik/Sib or Bruch/Mendelssohn," St. John has elected to debut a violin concerto by Australian composer Matthew Hindson, reinterpret John Corigliano's score for The Red Violin (1998) and put on her violin spin of Franz Liszt's “Totentanz." With this recording, St. John establishes herself firmly in the past and present, on her own terms, and with ...
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