Author name: Peter Matthews

Last night, trailblazing violinist Jennifer Koh was joined by Ensemble LPR at (le) Poisson Rouge. They came together for a night of music by John Zorn, Charles Wuorinen, and Ludwig van Beethoven as a part of the LPR X5 festival. All of the pieces, ‘Passagen’ by Zorn, ‘Spin-5 for Violin and 18 Musicians’ by Wuorinen, and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony brought a sense of wild abandon that perfectly complemented the youth and excitement of both Koh and Ensemble LPR.
Koh brought a fiery passion to John Zorn’s ‘Passagen’ for solo violin, which, like Wuorinen’s, was written for Ms. Koh. The piece is rife with rapid shifts from tight, intense tremolos and harsh pizzicato to tender ghostly harmonics. Sometimes, just sometimes, Koh coaxed out a single pure clean ethereal note or phrase that would sing out from the chaos before it was swallowed up again. The uneven rhythmic chords and pizzicato playing gave a distinctly Bartokian flavor, a flavor that was enhanced by Koh’s savage bowing.