To commemorate the 100th anniversary of founder Yehudi Menuhin’s birth, the “2016 Menuhin International Competition” was held in London, England. Yesong Sophie Lee of the United States (age 12) won the junior division, while Ziyu He of China (age 16) won the senior division.
Yesong Sophie Lee (12) & Ziyu He (16)
At the gala concert held at the Royal Festival Hall on the 17th, they performed Vivaldi: Concerto from The Four Seasons (Summer) and Dvořák: Violin Concerto, 3rd mov., respectively. As an encore, they also performed a contemporary work for solo violin by a Salzburg composer.
The Vivaldi, with 12-year-old Yesong Sophie Lee leading a chamber orchestra, was a performance of exceptionally fine nuance and wide dynamic range that completely transformed my assessment of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It was a performance in which one could keenly sense the orchestra members carefully taking the time to create music together with the young girl.
Ziyu He’s performance, meanwhile, was so commanding that it was hard to believe he was only 16. However, the piece he played as an encore was even better than the concerto.
After the interval, a violin bow was handed over to Geneva, the next host city of the Menuhin Competition. A performer representing London emerged from the left side of the hall while playing Greensleeves and passed the bow to a performer representing Geneva waiting in the center. The Geneva performer played Greensleeves briefly, then immediately shifted to a melody that seemed to be Swiss and exited to the right.
In the second half, Julia Fischer, who won the junior division of the 1995 Menuhin Competition, performed Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The orchestra then performed Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32, by itself.
The orchestra’s instruments were arranged in the American style: 1st violins, 2nd violins, violas, and cellos. With this layout, I wonder whether the high register becomes too concentrated on the left. Perhaps this was also at the direction of conductor Diego Matheuz, but unlike the recent tendency toward clear separation among orchestral sections, this orchestra’s strings in particular blended together, creating, for better or worse, a 20th-century sound.
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