Word: josefowicz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Three brilliant virtuosos guaranteed the success of last Friday's Bank-Boston Celebrity Series concert. Leila Josefowicz, a violinist who has survived being branded a child prodigy, performed in two concertos. Andreas Haefliger, a Mozart specialist, was the pianist in another. Jaime Laredo, darling of countless Sony recording projects, conducted the Brandenburg Ensemble and joined Josefowicz as a soloist. All the repertoire was light and bright and ideally suited to the orchestra...
Bach's Concerto for Two Violins was a useful way to compare Josefowicz and Laredo. Though she came closer to technical perfection (his bowing suffered slightly from his need to conduct), he blended more fully with the ensemble. Though she was more visibly enthusiastic in performance, he was more vigorous in the fast outer movements...
Their perfect accord in the largo made for the greatest single movement of the evening. This sky-scrapingly beautiful duet is one of Bach's greatest achievements, presaging the slow movements of Mozart violin concertos and Beethoven piano concertos. Standing there, gazing at each other, Josefowicz and Laredo looked like intense conversation partners who just happened to be holding violins: Sensitive to the largo's lullaby cadences, Laredo nudged the ensemble to produce a tender, if totally subdued, accompaniment...
Sunny and pleasing music continued in the second half of the program, which featured Josefowicz as the soloist in Haydn's first violin concerto. Since she has a technique that can handle the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos, Josefowicz was not troubled by the simpler Haydn and focused on achieving beauty of tone. She made even spiccato bowings sound lovely. Her upper register was uniformly pure, and she was better than before at blending; she and Laredo made a good team...
...Music. On her first CD, just released, she's being marketed a bit more wholesomely than her peers. "There is a fine line between really being able to convey something fresh and new and likable, and going over the top," observes Lisa Altman, vice president of Philips Classics, Josefowicz's label. "I don't think we've done that with Leila. She's got that Ivory Soap-Seventeen magazine type of appeal. We didn't want to take a short-term approach because I expect she is going to have a long, prolific career...