Music: She may be heir to Paganini. Or then again, not
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Your support makes all the difference.You Don't get a programme for Vanessa-Mae: she does brochures. Pay pounds 5 for one and you may learn that Vanessa-Mae "crosses all cultural, geographical and generational barriers" and that her first multi-platinum pop album "charted" in over 20 countries. But you won't learn what music the erstwhile child prodigy is playing tonight.
The Bratislava Symphony Orchestra has been refused work permits for her tour and Vanessa-Mae's 72-piece orchestral accompaniment has been reduced, for most of the classical stuff, to just two pianos. One of these was played by her mother, dressed in white tie and tails. The other was played by her now-orchestraless conductor, dressed ditto. Vanessa-Mae herself played the violin: old, brown and wooden in Part I, new, white and electric in Part II. She also spoke. "The thing about classical music," she informed us at one point, "is that it has been around for such a long time."
Vanessa-Mae's World Tour last year was called, by its promoters, "Red Hot". Her performance at the Barbican last Monday was cold, frightened and sad. Her intonation is on the whole precise, her violinist's vibrato ever-present. But where Bruch's Scottish Fantasy should float and tantalise, its decorative variations were ground out. Bach was accurate, but shapeless. And only Brahms was played with vim or enjoyment. Vanessa-Mae performs with arms stiff, body rigid, eyes fixed on the near horizon. A scared candidate in an eternal examination.
People who don't believe she can do both classical and pop, she says, are "cynics". Call me cynical. Her authentic Bach was nearly dead; her "techno-acoustic chamber" Bach had rhythmic vigour (the bongo drums helped). And at least when it comes to pop Vanessa-Mae can drop the references to that other "pop-star violinist" Paganini. As a classical player, Vanessa-Mae is no longer so young or so prodigious. Trouble lies ahead.
She plays Bach and Beethoven at the Musikverein in Vienna later this year, and deserves our sympathy. For Vanessa-Mae the recital may be an "altogether new concert format" but for the critical Viennese it is an old one. She had better starting playing music, instead of notes, pretty quick.
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