The Kennedy touch, from Bach to Hendrix.

by Suzannah Conway, The Australian, 4th February 2008

Nigel Kennedy, Sydney Symphony. Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, February 2. Civic Centre, Newcastle, NSW, Wednesday; Sydney Opera House, Friday, Saturday and February 11.

Kennedy also appears with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, February 15 and 16; and the Melbourne Symphony, February 28, 29 and March 1.

The enfant terrible of the classical music world, violinist Nigel Kennedy, back in Australia for a short tour with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, opened to a packed house and enthusiastic audience in Brisbane.

Now in his 50s, Kennedy continues to display the same youthful irreverence and irrepressible energy that was his calling card in the 1970s.

Mozart's Violin Concerto No4 in D relegates the orchestra firmly to an accompanying role, with the soloist part almost continuous.

With Kennedy writing his own cadenzas, the work soared in the first movement, his interpretation allowing the instrument to ease deftly into the finale with its sudden forte.

The second movement displayed some delicate cadenzas with a poetic intensity and beauty of interpretation rarely bettered.

Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major is symphonic in length and substantial in breadth, with the solo violin a principal part.

It's challenging for the most accomplished of soloists, but Kennedy relished the work, displaying extraordinary virtuosic and technical skills.

As Beethoven wrote no cadenzas, the soloist has almost complete freedom of interpretation.

Kennedy's deep artistic engagement and understanding of the expansiveness of the work allowed him to creatively serve and enrich the expressiveness of the instrument with a range of cadenzas that grew ever more demanding and spine-tingling.

From the outset Kennedy was firmly in control. Launching into his trademark banter with the audience, he treated it to a short but showy curtain-raise by Bach that was virtuosic and technically flawless.

As both soloist and director of the orchestral forces under his command (there was no conductor), his rapport with the players was palpable. Under his long-time friend concertmaster Dene Olding, the orchestra played confidently alongside Kennedy, responding to his manic antics with good-humoured aplomb.

Kennedy stretched the concert to almost three hours and yet the orchestra, as well as the audience, did not want to go home. The audience rose to its feet spontaneously following a blistering encore of Hungarian Gypsy music in a Czardas, so Kennedy decided another was called for, launching into his rendition of the Jimi Hendrix classic Purple Haze.

Kennedy breaks down every classical convention in a deliberately anarchic fashion, but his extraordinary technical skill, musicianship, commitment to his art form and the ability to shape and control his instrument in his own inimitable style made this a very special night.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23153198-5013577,00.html