The Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, Havanaise, the finale of the Concerto No.3, and the Romance op.48: these pieces composed between 1859 and 1887 are - justifiably - among the most celebrated works composed by Saint-Saëns.
They are also signature pieces of the Korean violinist Jinjoo Cho, first prize winner at the Montreal International Music Competition 2006 and Gold Medallist at the Julius Stulberg International String Competition 2005. She has long been under the spell of these sensual, refined musical works, and now presents them in this, her first recording collaboration with the Appassionato orchestra conducted by Mathieu Herzog.
“I love the contrast between these melodies, so full of light and movement, and the highly rhythmic figuration,” she confides. “The immense palette of sound contained in these two elements offers an incredible degree of artistic freedom.”
Jinjoo Cho knows how to electrify the music’s virtuosic elements, but also enjoys taking time to narrate a story, to amplify the range of colours and the vocal quality of the melodic lines: like an agile acrobat, she can leap while double-stopping, or make a decisive gesture with split-second accuracy, but always with a sense of poetry. On her side is Mathieu Herzog’s meticulously attentive orchestra - envisaged from the very start as a chamber formation, its musicians are gifted with that chamber quality of listening, of mutual flexibility between the different timbres. In this recording we can frequently hear them profiled more soloistically, such as in the Andantino of the Violin Concerto No. 3, or in the transcription of the aria ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix‘ from the opera Samon and Delilah, where the violin duets with the viola, reminding us just how expressively vocal the French master’s instrumental music is.
“Saint-Saëns is a composer who always maintained an unwavering ability to remain true to himself,” notes Mathieu Herzog admiringly. “His career began in the age of classical romanticism and ended amidst the artistic innovations of the 20th Century - but that didn’t prevent him from fully realizing his own independent artistic vision.”
