The Strad Issue: January 2011
Description: An uneven programme does little to hide the obvious skills of a young fiddler
Musicians: Caroline Adomeit (violin) Rochus Holewik (piano)
Composer: Bach, Piazzolla, Dvorák, Rodygin, Brahms, Elgar, Kreisler, Bernstein, Gardner, Gershwin, Dyens & J. Gade
The young German violinist Caroline Adomeit here sets out her technical credentials in a very fine reading of Bach’s Second Solo Partita in D minor. She takes a modern view, with a modest use of vibrato and a rhythmic freedom that allows her to stamp her own personality on the music. Yet she is still conscious of Baroque style and hacks into chords with the zeal of period-instrument performers. After musically dancing through much of the earlier part of the work, she sweeps aside the technical hurdles of the imposing final Chaconne to give an unhurried account of its many virtuoso passages.
Had she recorded the whole set of Sonatas and Partitas I would be comparing it with the outstanding versions in the catalogue, but instead she follows the D minor work with twelve lollipop pieces used in her much-travelled recital programme, a mix of delightfully played salon music, including Elgar’s Salut d’amour and Kreisler’s Marche miniature viennoise. She has the Latin temperament required for Piazzolla’s Oblivion and Gade’s Jalousie, and she presents a vivacious view of Joachim’s arrangement of Brahms’s Second Hungarian Dance and a delightful version of Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So. She enjoys an excellent and responsive partnership with the pianist Rochus Holewik, and the two are pleasingly recorded.
David Denton
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