Café Concerts

ABOVE VIDEO: Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk play the fourth movement of Franck's Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano

Some very successful musical collaborations have been built on shaky personal relationships. Gilbert and Sullivan disliked each other and rarely met. Renata Scotto often sang beautifully with Luciano Pavarotti, but excoriated him in her autobiography.

The team of violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jeremy Denk appears to be different. “Finding the right musical partner is like making best friends,” Bell said. “You make them throughout your life, you sometimes fall into them, but in the end you don’t have a lot of really, really great friends. You have a handful and Jeremy is one of mine.”

Denk concurs. “It’s like when you are talking with someone and you feel this kind-of instant sympathy or empathy.”

Classical musicians often are known to gush around interviewers but Denk and Bell have a track record to back up their mutual admiration society. Both attended Indiana University, but just as Denk entered the school in 1990, Bell had already graduated. The latter was on his way to a big career as a soloist and violin pin-up god.

But like two ships passing in the night, Bell and Denk kept tabs on each others’ careers. When they finally performed together – playing the Grieg Violin Sonata at the 2004 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C. – sparks flew. They've been touring regularly ever since. This month they release "French Impressions," their first recording, which consists of violin sonatas by Saint-Saens, Franck and Ravel.

In the WQXR Café, Bell and Denk played the blistering finale from Franck’s Sonata in A Major. Bell surmised that he's performed the work "at least 1,000 times," which isn’t entirely surprising. Franck wrote the piece as a wedding present for Eugène Ysaÿe, who gave its premiere. Ysaÿe then taught Josef Gingold, who in turn taught Bell at Indiana (where Bell now holds a professorship himself).

The new recording also marks a turning point: Bell’s last release for Sony, “At Home with Friends,” was a smorgasbord of classical, pop, Latin jazz and film-music arrangements (Denk appeared on one track); Denk’s recent recordings have focused on knotty works by Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

The two artists decided to record "French Impressions" not in a traditional studio but at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ. “Recording is scary because you know it’s going to be down forever,” said Denk. “Especially for this music – it’s so much is about the sound and the color and the pallet of colors from both instruments. That’s very important for us to make sure we have the right sound.”

Tune in to WQXR to hear more performances of Joshua Bell & Jeremy Denk on Jan. 10 at 8 pm.

Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Edward Haber; Interview: Elliott Forrest; Text: Brian Wise

VIDEO: Charlie Siem Plays Shostakovich

While chatting with Charlie Siem, one gets the feeling the English violinist is yearning to quote that old shampoo commercial: Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

The Russian-born violinist Alina Ibragimova in recent years has developed a following in Europe, especially in the U.K., where she studied and came of age. She appears poised to have a bigger following in New York, too, after her recent performances at the Mostly Mozart Festival and in the studio at WQXR. She came to the WQXR performance studio to present two pieces, starting with Eugène Ysaÿe's Sonata No. 3. Watch the video below and listen to the full segment at the top of this page.

This past June, Ibragimova, 29, released a recording of Ysaÿe's six violin sonatas, known as some of the most treacherous solo works in the repertoire. They are portraits, of a sort, of six violinists whom the composer knew in the 1920s: Joseph Szigeti, Jacques Thibaud, Georges Enescu, Fritz Kreisler, Mathieu Crickboom and Manual Quiroga. "You hear the personalities," said Ibragimova. "They feel like proper little dedications."

Ibragimova arrived at the station early one August morning after having performed a late-night (10 pm) recital at Lincoln Center's Kaplan Penthouse—one of at least two such performances this summer, another being at London's Royal Albert Hall in July. The violinist believes the late shift helps put audiences in a more contemplative mindset for listening. "I think the atmosphere changes for the time of day," she said. "People listen differently."

For her second performance, Ibragimova offered the Largo from J.S. Bach's Solo Violin Sonata No. 3.

Ibragimova's still-young career is notable for the sheer breadth of her repertoire interests. She has also formed an all-female string quartet called Chiaroscuro that uses period instruments, though she herself opts for an unorthodox approach to equipment, changing strings, pitch and bows on her (comparably modern) 1780 Anselmo Bellosio violin. "Whilst it works, I find it's not ideal," she said. "Now I'm going to try a different violin to use with the quartet just so I don't have to put my violin through this all the time."

When she isn't touring, Ibragimova lives in Greenwich, England with her husband, the Guardian music critic Tom Service. The couple married in the spring, having first met when he interviewed her. She says it isn't difficult having a critic around who is constantly evaluating music. And there are perks: "There are so many books now at home. It's great. He knows all the opus numbers."

Video: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Irene Trudel; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon; Text & Production: Brian Wise

The cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O'Riley are quick to emphasize that their recent venture into Baroque period instruments isn't some fusty or antiquated pursuit. The duo's new album, "Beethoven, Period," was recorded at Skywalker Ranch, film director George Lucas's famous studio complex in Northern California. Instead of sheet music they played from iPads. Their Seattle launch concert took place at the Tractor Tavern, a rock club.

The experience with very old instruments also forced them to rethink their approach to Beethoven's music. "All of the sudden, the relation between the cello and the piano is completely different," Haimovitz tells host Elliott Forrest. "No longer am I trying to project over the grandeur of a Steinway grand but I'm actually having to make room for the piano."

"You have a lot more leeway in terms of expressivity and color, even in the sense of one note having a shape to it," added O'Riley.

The album features Beethoven's complete works for cello and keyboard, with O'Riley playing on a fortepiano made in 1823 and Haimovitz outfitting his 1710 Goffriller cello with ox-gut strings, a rosewood tailpiece and a period bow.

The duo's performance in the WQXR studio marked a return to (mostly) modern equipment – with a 1940's Steinway and a modern cello bow – but two movements from the Opus 102 No. 2 sonata had a lightness and transparency that suggested time diligently spent in the period-instrument camp.

As Haimovitz notes, the Opus 102 sonatas "offer a window into Beethoven's late period where he's deconstructing all of the ideas of the enlightenment and what he inherited from Haydn and Mozart and really finding his own voice complete." Below is the third movement.

O'Riley and Haimovitz have previously collaborated on "Shuffle. Play. Listen" (2012), an album of pieces by classical composers (Stravinsky, Janacek, Martinu) along pop acts (Radiohead, Cocteau Twins, Arcade Fire), among others. Both artists have sought to blur the lines between pop and classical over the past decade or more – since Haimovitz began playing Bach in bars and clubs in 2002 and O'Riley started arranging arty rock songs around the same time.

Together the duo is planning a future project of pop songs given classical reworkings by contemporary composers. According to O'Riley, it will include John Corigliano's resettings of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs; Philip Glass arranging the Velvet Underground; and Gunther Schuller taking on the band Guided by Voices. A recording is expected to be out this fall.

Haimovitz and O'Riley also don't shy away from lush, romantic works as well, as their final performance in the WQXR studio demonstrates: the Andante from Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata, Op. 19. Watch that below and listen to the full segment at the top of this page.

Video: Kim Nowacki; Sound: Irene Trudel; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Elliott Forrest

Blame it on Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring or perhaps the ridiculous virtuosity that is characteristic of so much bluegrass playing. In the past decade, growing numbers of classical musicians have been mixing it up with fiddlers, banjo players and mandolin pluckers. Yo-Yo Ma has worked with bluegrass players in the Goat Rodeo Sessions; mandolin wizard Chris Thile has played his own concerto with several American orchestras and released an album of Bach partitas.

The latest group to explore this hybrid is the Jake Schepps Quintet, a string band whose members are steeped in bluegrass spontaneity but whose repertoire – yes, repertoire – is by composers from the modern classical tradition. They include Matt McBane, Marc Mellits, Gyan Riley, and Matt Flinner. Led by Schepps, a Colorado-based banjoist, the group came to WQXR to play three pieces from "Entwined," their debut album.

"Most of the instruments in the string band aren't foreign" to classical composers, said Schepps, in an interview with host Terrance McKnight. "Most classical composers have written for violin, guitar, and bass, and a mandolin is tuned like a violin so it's familiar territory."

The quintet's set began with Flatiron VII: Planetary Tuners by Mellits, a Chicago-based composer whose works have been performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Kronos Quartet, among other groups.

Schepps has been at the forefront of melding bluegrass with other genres for several years. He previously recorded an album of Béla Bartok's music arranged for a string band, "An Evening In The Village," and says he wants to play the music of Henry Purcell for a future project. "I fell in love with his three and four-part fantasias," he said. "I love Baroque music and Bach. I'm always curious for places that I can take string band instruments into new terrain." Schepps added that it's a "lateral step" to transfer pieces from Purcell's viola da gambas to the five-string banjo.

The quintet's next selection is the album's title track, by Matt McBane, a Brooklyn violinist and composer who directs the Carlsbad Music Festival in California and whose music has been played by a number of new-music groups.

Flinner, who plays mandolin in the quintet, composed the last selection in the set, called Migrations. He tells McKnight that his challenge "was trying, as a bluegrass musician, to write across that line in a long-form manner. Classical music goes so many different directions these days. One thing that we could use more of is more American roots elements added to that. Bluegrass is a uniquely American art form. It feels like it's getting more respect."

Schepps added: "My hope is that a classical audience will come to find something interesting about bluegrass."

Listen to the full interview and performances at the top of this page.

Jake Schepps Quintet Personnel:

Jake Schepps: five-string banjoMatt Flinner: mandolinRyan Drickey: violinJordan Tice: acoustic guitarAndrew Small: double bass

Videos: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Irene Trudel; Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Terrance McKnight; Production Assistance: Rebecca Stein