Joshua Bell's path to becoming the world's most famous violinist began with displaying impeccable technique and a pure tone at a remarkably early age. But what really put him in the public ear was his ability to seduce a listener with heartstrings-tugging music of the Romantic period. Bell knows how to make his Stradivarius sing like a lovestruck serenader below your window, coaxing you toward the curtains.
But can he perform superhuman feats of digital dexterity? Can he astound you with lightning-fast lines that rocket into the stratosphere? Jaw-dropping jumps about the instrument akin to those of the greatest rock guitarists?
Yes. At age 55, Bell is capable of blowing an audience away with awe-inspiring athleticism and musicality that few can match, as he proved in Winona on Tuesday evening at the Minnesota Beethoven Festival. And he brought along one of the world's most celebrated chamber orchestras, the London-based Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Bell has been the group's music director since 2011.
The concert may have been memorable enough if only from Bell pushing the wow meter into the red zone on Niccolo Paganini's First Violin Concerto. It's a work seemingly written exclusively for the purpose of showing off its composer's legendary prowess as a soloist, which inspired murmurs of deals with the devil.
But it also featured the most passionately intense interpretation of Robert Schumann's Second Symphony you're ever likely to experience, a precise and powerful example of Romanticism at its stormiest. My two-hour trip to Winona for this sold-out concert at the town's middle school auditorium was well worth the drive, for it proved undoubtedly one of Minnesota's classical music events of the year, or perhaps decade.
It began with Beethoven, Bell taking the concertmaster's seat to lead the 43-piece orchestra in the "Egmont" Overture, a nine-minute taste of Beethoven's favored path from weighty darkness into blazing light that proved a thrilling curtain-raiser.
Anyone who's seen Bell on his many Twin Cities visits — his local ubiquity enhanced by a three-year stint as a St. Paul Chamber Orchestra artistic partner — knows that his physicality and sweat-soaked mane are part of his brand. The Indiana native wears his work ethic on his sleeve, never more so than on this Olympian effort, which received a well-deserved partial standing ovation — after the first movement.
And why not? After all, Bell was dancing with the all-time greats by stepping onto Paganini's turf, and he was indeed all over the instrument, with fast and furious fingerings, piercingly clear high notes, dauntingly aggressive double stops and technical wizardry seldom seen.
