TAG; Rachel lee Priday loves the thrill ofhaving a huge orchestra behind her on stage. TAG; Rachel lee Priday loves the thrill ofhaving a huge orchestra behind her on stage.
PROKOFIEV is the thread linking American violinist Rachel Lee Priday’s two concerts in Cape Town with the Cape Town Concert Series on June 11 at The Baxter Concert Hall and the Cape Town Philharmonic on June 30 at The City Hall.
For this violinist, who says she heard music from the age of one and knew by seven that she had no choice but to be a musician, it doesn’t matter whether she plays chamber music or with an orchestra for there are benefits to both.
“There’s no excitement better than having that huge orchestra behind you on stage; on the other hand, recitals offer so much more in terms of repertoire choices to create a programme which reflects one’s loves. Beethoven is perhaps my favourite composer, so the Kreutzer Sonata is on the Concert Series programme, along with the F minor Sonata by Prokofiev, which is a masterpiece for the violin/piano repertoire, a hauntingly beautiful piece which takes one to the extremes of the emotions. Then,” she laughs, “the Prokofiev Violin Concerto no 1 with the CPO is almost like a poem, a completely magical fairy tale of Russian folk songs with shimmering music evocative of nature and taking us through a forest of sounds.”
Priday was hugely influenced by Dorothy DeLay, one of America’s iconic teachers. She auditioned for DeLay when she was seven (she had her first lesson when she was four) and was invited to join her at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. The only problem was they lived in Chicago. Her whole family was so supportive of the talented tot that they did indeed move there. Her mother is an amateur pianist and singer, and accompanied one of her brothers who played the cello when young. The family members remain close and love close to each other in city, attending concerts together when Rachel is home.
Rachel’s career began when she was nine and played a concerto at the Aspen Festival. Since then she has played with several top orchestras from the Chicago Symphony and National Symphony Orchestra in DC to the Berlin Staatskapelle. She has also played in several countries from China and Korea to England and in chamber music festivals from Aspen, Moritzburg and Verbier to the Mostly Mozart Festival at Avery Fisher Hall and Ravinia’s “Rising Stars”.
Ms Priday gave master classes in China last year and is working with the CPO to do some in Stellenbosch on her one free day there! She enjoys this, seeing it as an extension of the teaching she does in New York. “I like to see the different approaches around the world, “ she says. “While there are similarities in the way we all teach western classical music, the approach in the US is different to that in Asia. In the US, we focus on individuality where students are taught to find their own voice. In countries in Asia, the teachers have a stronger influence impressing a school of playing or training on students. The art and the musicians are respected much more in Asian countries. You need to do a lot of serious work when you are young if you are serious about music, and that takes discipline and a lot of family support.”
Priday’s technique has been described as dazzling and forceful, and she has been lauded for the beauty of tone, riveting stage presence, and “irresistible panache” by the Chicago Tribune.
She came to South Africa after performing in Pasadena, and returns to New York (and then Vietnam) to make a video od 2014 Pulitzer Prize Finalist Christopher Cerrone’s Violin Sonata– a work which Rachel commissioned, alongside pianist David Kaplan, and premiered last year. This was the first in a series of collaborations she has in the planning stages in which she will commission many more works and give their premieres.
Her wide-ranging interests are reflective in other ways. She performed the premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s The Orphic Moment with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and the Encounters Ensemble at the Peabody Essex Museum in an innovative staging that mixed poetry, drama, visuals, and music. She has worked in interdisciplinary collaborations with Ballet San Jose and Symphony Silicon Valley, and performed in a week-long run of Tchaikovsky: None But The Lonely Heart, a theatrical concert bringing to life the strange relationship between Tchaikovsky and his patroness Madame von Meck, with Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Priday came here through Bryan Wallick, the manager who will also accompany her in several recitals around the country. “He was recommended by cellist Benjamin Capp and pianist Vassily Primakov both of whom played in SA. A tour was being planned for 2017 so I am happy it has fallen into place earlier. I have been to Morocco, but nowhere else in Africa, so it’s a great adventure!” She hopea sightsee once she has completed some practising on her Nicolo Gagliano violin (Naples, 1760) named Alejandro.
Her tour includes the Paganini Violin Concerto with the KZNPO on June 9 and with the FSSO in Bloemfontein on June 25 with the FFSO and Bernhard Gueller, the Concert Series recital on June 11, Stellenbosch on June 12, and the Prokofiev Violin Concerto no 1 with the CPO on June 30. The other works on the CPO programme are Ravel’s Alborado del Gracioso and the Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninov.
l CPO concert: 021 421 7695. Concert Series: Computicket.