[piano intro] - [Announcer] Funding for "The Violin Journey" provided by Deerfield, Gillespie Dental Associates, Frugal Framer, Mercy Urgent Care, Laborde Eye Group, BlackBird Frame and Art, Gould Killian CPA Group, Tops for Shoes, HomeTrust Bank, Groce Funeral Home, Asheville Eye Associates.

[orchestra tuning] ♪ - Hello, and welcome to the stage of the Diana Wortham Theater.

My name is Darko Butorac.

I'm the Music Director and Conductor of your Asheville Symphony.

I'm very excited about our concert this evening.

Today, we welcome a wonderful soloist, violinist Jimmy Thompson.

He comes to us from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Every year, the Asheville Symphony brings a talented musician who wins the Cleveland Institute of Music competition to perform with our orchestra.

Enjoy the performance.

[audience applauds] ["Symphony No.

104 in D Major"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] With me today is violinist Jimmy Thompson.

Jimmy, welcome.

- Thank you so much.

It's my pleasure to be here.

- We really enjoy having you.

It's been a wonderful experience working with you and rehearsing this wide variety of violin repertoire.

- Plenty of music.

- Well, I'm very happy that that we have a chance to go through some of this repertoire.

So on the first set we present today, we have Bach's A minor concerto, the first movement, and along with piece from an opera by Massenet, Jules Massenet, "Thais," it's called "The Meditation," very well known work, and finally ending with the Mendelssohn violin concerto, the third movement.

So in a way, it's almost like a hybrid concerto, starting with the first movement, then a slow piece, and then ending with the big flourish.

What is it like playing these pieces for you?

Why have you chosen them?

- These are some of the, I think, cornerstone pieces in the violin repertoire, and I think they're really representative of a lot of the types of sort of classical and early romantic music making that the violin is capable of.

With the Bach, of course, we go back to the 18th century, and this is such an exciting piece, and actually one that's been really fun for me to learn, because it was one of the very first real pieces that I got to play on the violin when I was learning many years ago, so I dusted it off from the shelves and see all my old markings on it from when I was in.

- What does that feel like?

- In grade school.

Well, there's some things that I'm trying to read my wobbly handwriting and some fingerings and bowings that I put in back there that I will safely say that I changed for this concert, but that's one of the great things about learning the violin or any of these these wonderful instruments is that it's such a long legacy of wonderful music to play, and the Bach concerto is so exciting and it's got such great dialogue between the violinist and the orchestra.

I mean, it's really a concerto for the entire ensemble, as many of these Bach concertos were, so that for me is a lot of fun, and it's, you'll see, it's the one piece in the program that I get to lead.

- Exactly.

I was gonna say, it's, I was very grateful that you were willing to do this, because it's, in fact, as the part is written, you can see the part was written for the violinist to lead the ensemble and then to step out of the ensemble and be the soloist.

- [James] Correct.

- So it really doesn't make sense to have a conductor just stand in the way.

- [James] Right.

- And I really appreciate you doing that.

- Absolutely, yeah.

It's so much fun when you get to interact with the musicians in that way as a soloist.

[audience applauds] ["Violin Concerto in A Minor"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] ["Mediation" from "Thais"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] Of course, we've got then the slow movement of our hybrid concerto with the "Meditation," which is just a beautiful, beautiful aria and showcases, I think, the lyrical quality of the violin and I think is a great arrangement that we've got for this evening's concert.

And of course, we end with the Mendelssohn, which is one of my favorite pieces to play on the violin, and the last movement is just quintessential Mendelssohn.

It's got that sort of lightness, vibrancy, energy.

- Anytime I have to rehearse the orchestra and want things to be more sparkly or more lighter or shorter.

If you just say, play it like Mendelssohn, that's what comes outta the orchestra.

- [James] Exactly.

- So, yeah, you're right, it really is.

It's one of his later pieces, one of his last works for orchestra, and in this case violin soloist, and it's such a joy to perform.

I have to say, on a funny note, really, necessity is the mother of invention.

So here we have, typically this is a piece done with a large orchestra.

We have, I think, 18 musicians on stage, and yet it's the quality of Mendelssohn's work, as you mentioned, the lightness, that makes it possible for it to work in such a setting because it really is chamber music.

- [James] Absolutely.

- And I love the fact, speaking as a conductor, one of the consistent frustrations in performing this piece is if you have the soloist and you have the woodwind section in its usual position, there's so much interplay between the two groups, it's constant battle of trying to keep things together.

- Yes, very difficult.

- And being in a small ensemble, it just feels like one big, happy family, and it's just a joy to perform.

- Yes, absolutely.

I would agree, I would agree.

["Violin Concerto in E Minor"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] - I'm really grateful and glad for the final selection of the solo set, which is the first movement of the first solo sonata by Ysaye, and here's a composer who might not be known so much to, let's say, the standard symphony audience, because the repertoire is, the best repertoire's actually for what we talked about earlier, solo violin.

- Absolutely, and Ysaye was an absolute towering figure in the history of my instrument and.

- [Darko] Belgian violinist.

- Yes, Belgian violinist, and active sort of the the first half of the 20th century, and he covered all the bases.

Incredible performer, world famous pedagogue.

He had his own chamber music groups that he performed in.

He was a concert master.

I mean, he did it all and played.

- [Darko] And a composer.

- And of course, a composer, - [Darko] Incredible composer.

- Incredible composer.

And Ysaye is a composer who's well known in the violin world because he wrote so much tremendous music for our instrument, but as you said, perhaps not so for the typical symphony audience who's used to their Mozart and Beethoven symphonies, et cetera, but man, this piece is a wild ride.

- So for the audience at home, keep an eye, watch it twice, listen once and then admire what it takes to produce the sound and the violin to be able to do this.

It's really, it's such a virtuoso piece.

- [James] Absolutely.

- Thank you so much for offering to do it.

- [James] Oh, my pleasure.

["Sonata for Violin Solo No.1 in G Minor"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] ["Pashona Kolo"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] - So for our third set, we take a little bit of a popular vein, and we just started off with a work called "Pashona Kolo."

It's a dance work from my country, from Serbia, and this is really, in a way, invocation of a fiddling style that's based in the village, and the next three works we present are all kind of, in some way, relate to that root, but have entirely different twists.

So, let's start first with the Fritz Kreisler "Tambourin Chinois," the Chinese drum.

First, tell us a little bit about Kreisler.

- So Kreisler was a extremely colorful figure in the the tradition of great violin performers.

He was a tremendous Viennese violinist, and as I mentioned earlier, also a tremendous composer, and whereas Bacewicz liked to incorporate some of her Polish national ideas into her music, Kreisler's music, even the ones that are maybe based on music from another culture, like we're about to hear tonight, always have this sort of Viennese charm and elegance to them, and he also really embodied that in his own playing, and there's some wonderful, wonderful recordings of Kreisler available online to listen to, and I would encourage everyone to listen to him, because he is just the most charming violinist you'll ever hear.

- Very dapper gentleman.

- Exactly, exactly.

Not a hair out of place, and that's kind of the, as violin, I feel like all violinists have at least a little bit of the sound of Kreisler in their ear, especially when they're playing music like this.

- Yeah, so this piece is quite, let's say, anachronistic.

It's a Viennese violinist writing at the beginning of the century and taking the impression of what Chinese music is.

- [James] Right, exactly.

- Which is at best born from visiting something like Chinatown in New York.

- [James] Right.

- And pretending that, you know, it was such an exotic concept at the time.

So you hear the cliches, the fifths, the drones and the woodwinds and the brass and the use of the percussion, but from a violinistic perspective, quite a virtuoso piece and lot of extended techniques.

- Absolutely, yeah.

It's got, you're going all over the fingerboard in the piece, and yeah, as you mentioned, it's almost more of the, especially in Europe, there was this fascination during this time with the idea of some exoticism, and numerous composers incorporated these.

It's kind of funny.

They all incorporated the same sounds into their music, no matter which exotic culture they were trying to portray.

- It's true, the pentatonic scale had its heyday at the turn of this century.

- Exactly, exactly.

But anyways, it's, regardless of its origin, it is a really fun piece, and you can truly hear the Viennese qualities come out in the slow section, which is almost a, this really lilting melody that comes between the more fiery parts at either ends.

["Tambourin Chinois"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] ["Ashokan Farewell"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] ["Csardas"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [audience applauds] [orchestral music] ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] "The Violin Journey" was created in partnership with Wortham Center for the Performing Arts, Kimpton Hotel Arras Asheville, North Carolina Arts Council, Explore Asheville, The Payne Fund, Mr. And Mrs. Thomas C. Bolton, University of North Carolina Asheville, Asheville Symphony Guild, Asheville Symphony Symphonettes.