TwoSet Violin Finally Comes to Davies

Brett Yang and Eddy Chen taking a bow with their pianist Sophie Druml (photograph by Cecilia Tan, from The Strad)

Some readers may recall that the TwoSet Violin duo of violinists Brett Yang and Eddy Chen was scheduled to perform in Davies Symphony Hall during last July’s Summer with the Symphony season. That debut recital had to be postponed, but last night they finally made it to Davies to perform their Sacrilegious Games program. The “sacrilege” was, of course, their approach to the violin repertoire. The result was an engaging evening of physical comedy recalling the past antics of Peter Schickele and Victor Borge. Indeed, their (intentionally) delayed appearance almost served as an homage to Schickele’s frantic opening shtik.

In this case, however, the waiting was ameliorated by the appearance of their piano accompanist, Sophie Druml, who took the stage right on time. She warmed-up the audience with an arrangement (her own?) of the last of the “24 Caprices for Solo Violin” by Niccolò Paganini. This was followed by music from the “Winter” concerto from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons involving a charade of violin-playing.

Of course both of the violinists had a solid command of technique. When they were not poking fun at the classics in all directions, Chen delivered a thoroughly engaging solo account of the opening passage in Jean Sibelius’ Opus 47 violin concerto, and Yang was just as rock-solid in his delivery of Camille Saint-Saëns Opus 20 “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.” However, the heart of the program was the diversity of their takes on comedy. Most memorable, probably, was when both of them played the last of the Paganini Caprices while spinning hula hoops. The most ambitious undertaking, however, was probably taking “La campanella” (the theme of the final movement of Paganini’s second violin concerto) and performing it in a series of styles as a journey through music history: baroque, classical, romantic, twentieth-century, jazz, and K-pop.

It’s nice to know that Davies can be just as welcoming to physical comedy as it is to “serious music!”