 Grammy Grabs
The 51st Annual Grammy Awards, held on February 8, served as a good source of vindication for some and reaffirmation for others. Solo violinist Hilary Hahn’s bet on Schoenberg and Sibelius paid off, as her album Schoenberg/Sibelius: Violin Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon), with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, won in the Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra) category. “I’m so excited to have won a Grammy this year. I owe a lot to Esa-Pekka and the Swedish Radio—I didn’t do this alone! The Schoenberg/Sibelius album was very important to me, and to see it recognized by the musical community, as well as commercially, is immensely rewarding,” Hahn says.
Elliott Carter has been lauded as one of the greatest living composers and has received several tributes as his 100th birthday took place in December. The Pacifica Quartet, which has worked intimately with Carter while perfecting his quartet cycle, won in the Best Chamber Music Performance category for Elliott Carter: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5 (Naxos). “It is a tremendous and surprising honor,” Pacifica violist Masumi Per Rostad says. “Even the news of the nomination knocked us off our feet! It is really great music and we are glad that people are listening to it. Happy birthday Elliott Carter!”
But the most wins by a string player, or anyone else, came from bluegrass fiddler and country singer Alison Krauss and legendary Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant’s Raising Sand (Rounder). The duo won Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, Best Pop
Collaboration with Vocals, and Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.
Other notable winners included conductor Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Best Orchestral Performance category for their Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 (CSO Resound); and BeauSoleil and Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet for Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album for Live at the 2008 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
For a complete list of winners, visit grammy.com.
—Rory Williams
Echoes of Lincoln’s Ghost
If violins could speak, what a story this fiddle could tell. The violin Joshua Bell played February 11 at the Ford’s Theatre Grand Reopening Celebration in Washington, DC, had reportedly been there before . . . on April 14, 1865—the night Abraham Lincoln was shot. It’s just an ordinary German trade instrument, but it bears an unusual series of labels, including one stating, “Was played at Ford’s Theatre Washington, D.C. at the time pres. [sic] Lincoln was shot.” A second label bears the name of its first owner, Civil War soldier Samuel Crossley and the dates of his assignments during the war. The fiddle is part of the Ford’s Theater Museum collection.
—Erin Shrader
Dibs on Mozart
It’s not every day that a violinist gets to give the premiere of music penned by a composer who’s been dead for more than 200 years, let alone one who’s as prolific as Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart. Violinist Daniel Cuiller, a professor of Baroque violin at the Le Conservatoire de Paris as well as the director of the early-music ensemble Stradivaria, now has the distinction of doing both.
In late January, Cuiller gave the first-ever public performance of an incomplete score written by Mozart.
The score, which lasts about two minutes, has been authenticated by Ulrich Leisinger of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg,
Austria, but Cuiller has doubts that it was an original composition by Mozart. “Of course, I was ‘touched’ at the moment where I have played these few bars of music, but, for myself, we are in front of something [hypothetical],” Cuiller says. The music had been discovered in September at a city library in Nantes, western France. Leisinger told the BBC that three lines of the music are missing.
—R.W.
Fortunate Son
A deployed soldier’s query on Violinist.com has created a snowball of support from fellow string players. A member of the popular online forum, Timothy Weston, a 28-year-old US Army infantryman, explained that he wanted to buy his first violin, but wasn’t sure what he could get with a meager budget or how the violin might react to the harsh conditions of Iraq.
That’s when several members jumped to action. One donated a William Lewis and Son violin, another donated a bow, and several donated money for a bow, sturdy case, rosin, and learning materials.
After verifying Weston’s identity, luthier David Burgess, who initiated the donations and gave the fiddle a shop setup, sent the package on February 2.
During conversations online, Spc. Weston expressed his gratitude. “I never expected a ‘collection plate’ or a donation instrument by any means,” Weston notes. “The world could do with more people like those found in this community. . . . It is a true testament to the humanity that is still in the world, which can be hard, at times, to see over here.”
—R.W.
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