Tessa Lark’s Shenson Spotlight Recital

Violinist Tessa Lark performing at the Irvine Barclay Theatre (photograph by Sewageboy, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, from Wikimedia Commons)

Last night Davies Symphony Hall saw the beginning of this year’s Shenson Spotlight Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). As was acknowledged on this site in January, this set of four recitals was conceived to provide a platform for “Ascendant artists in recital.” The first recitalist of this year was violinist Tessa Lark, who is actually rather well along the way on her “ascendant” path. Indeed, in 2020 she was a GRAMMY nominee for her recording of Michael Torke’s “Sky” violin concerto, which she recorded with the Albany Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller.

Nevertheless, last night was her SFS debut; and the “central core” of her program consisted of solo violin performances. These were flanked on either side by duos with pianist Jeremy Denk. Denk is no stranger to San Francisco; and, according to my records, his last appearance in Davies took place with SFS in October of 2021. The partnership was the result of a last-minute replacement; but the chemistry could not have been better.

That said, I have to confess that, from a personal point of view, the high point of last night came at the middle with Lark’s account of the fourth of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Opus 27 solo violin sonatas, composed in the key of E minor. This was composed for the virtuoso violinist Fritz Kreisler; and, with movement titles such as “Allemande” and “Sarabande,” it reflects on Kreisler’s command of the solo violin sonatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. Kreisler had a reputation as a bon vivant, which may have explained why Lark followed Ysaÿe’s sonata with two compositions of her own in that same spirit, “Ysaÿe Shuffle” and “Jig and Pop.”

Kreisler was also represented as a composer in his own right with two compositions, “Chanson Louis XIII and Pavane in the style of Louis Couperin” and “Syncopation.” The latter showed a further reflection on his capacity for high spirits (equaled only by his capacity for massive suppers) with an unabashed ragtime rhetoric. Those spirits were then sustained through the concluding performance of John Corigliano’s duo sonata, which may (or may not) have played a few of its own “quotation games.” However, what impressed me most was that the sonata concluded with cadenzas for both violin and piano.

The program was most traditional at the beginning with the Romanian Folk Dances suite by Béla Bartók. This was originally composed for solo piano, but was arranged for violin-piano duo by Zoltán Székely. He was responsible for cataloging Bartók’s works, which is why this piece is often identified as Sz. 56. I have known this music since my high school days. (The orchestral version has a wonderful clarinet solo in the second movement.) Lark’s account was the perfect “warm-up” for a thoroughly engaging recital.