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Violinist John Holloway plays Bach
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Violinist John Holoway. Friday at Rock Spring Presbyterian Church, Atlanta. www.johnholloway.org.
John Holloway is among the world’s most compelling and respected musicians, yet what seem like internal contradictions can mask his authority and musical majesty.
Only about 25 people paid the “galaâ€? ticket prices to hear the British violinist play a solo sonata and a partita by J.S. Bach — less than an hour of music, and not all of it well played.
The concert, during a rain storm Friday at Rock Springs Presbyterian Church, was billed as a benefit for New Trinity Baroque, a local early-music ensemble with ambitions to go international. It was a stop on Holloway’s U.S. tour promoting his latest CD of Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for violin (on the prestigious ECM label).
Why a benefit show with top ticket prices at $100? Last year, New Trinity hired Holloway, a pioneer of the early-music movement, as its music director. But after just a few concerts (and rave reviews) the partnership was broken by personality clashes and sagging attendance and donations — and trailed by whiffs of frustration at a great opportunity gone sour.
Just before touching his baroque violin bow to gut strings Friday night, he told the audience he was there to “repay a debt� after a season of “great fun.� So perhaps it was the high humidity, not any lingering bitterness, that made it seem he hadn’t warmed up for the Sonata No. 2 in A minor.
His tone was scratchy, and he was bedeviled by minor intonation problems and uncommonly sluggish finger work. (Another factor at work was his instrument. Because of potential airport security risks with carry-on bags, he left his 1750 Gagliano violin in Europe and on this tour played a modern fiddle by Swiss luthier Christian Sager.)
Still, as he read from a facsimile of the composer’s beautifully hand-scrawled manuscript, Holloway’s concepts slowly came into view: Bach’s music isn’t strictly about Olympian grandeur and stately “perfection� but about personal confession, a life’s journey loaded with dualities of joy and sorrow and meaning.
After brief speeches from New Trinity leaders, Holloway returned with the Partita No. 2 in D minor, and, finally, he offered his gifts generously. The opening Allemande danced with great dignity, all silk and elegance, savored like the last slow dance of the night. The spritely Gigue held a world of emotion and regret, a bit melancholy and the most intensely personal and intensely spiritual I’ve heard this music performed live. His interpretation, like the Gospels in Bach’s Bible, married the human and the celestial.
In the partita’s final Chaconne, where most violinists play it vertically, as a tour of the stratosphere, Holloway remained earth-bound, a 14-minute tale of tragic beauty. As he landed softly on the very last note, a resonant D, I had a strange sensation, akin to looking at the blank white page at the end of a 300-page novel — and not wanting to close the book.
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