Review reprinted with permission

Many violinists are merely content to run through today's standard recital format of one sonata after another, rarely bothering to try anything that might disrupt the routine. San Francisco's Joseph Gold, however, chooses to go his own way, playing technically challenging music with a Romantic bent, often centered around a unifying theme.

A former student of Jascha Heifetz (you can hear the Heifetz influence in his incisive attacks), Gold has been offering his fresh alternative to the same old thing in major cities like Vienna, Barcelona and Florence on his just-completed European tour. On one Saturday evening, with a young, hugely gifted, Northern Italian pianist Marco Cadario as his partner, Gold put together a program centered around the music of the Italian violin sorcerer Niccolo Paganini. In doing so, Gold and Cadario had to contend with the extremely long reverberation time of the Chiesa Parrocchiele Sangiano, which could easily turn a rapid string of detached notes into blurred tonal hash. Yet with crisply executed attacks and releases, the pair minimized the problems posed by the church's tricky acoustics (Gold and Cadario repeated this program a week later in Florence's Cherubini Conservatory, where the acoustics were friendlier).

Sailed through sandtraps

Opening with Paganini's "Duetto Amoroso," a lyrical dialogue between male and female lovers (both impersonated by the violin), Gold's interpretation has clearly deepened, emphasizing the difference between the two voices without giving way to excess sentiment. A sonata by the Baroque-period composer Locatelli seemed to look forward about a century in time - and it pushes even further ahead with its ragtime-like syncopations in the second movement. With its recitative-like passages and full-blown arias, Spohr's Violin Concerto No. 8 (transcribed for violin and piano) is actually an operatic scene in all but name - and Gold recognized this by carefully maintaining a sustained singing line while easily sailing through the technical sandtraps that Spohr placed in his path.

It would be easy to guess that Sivori was a student of Paganini, for the theme of the former's Andante Cantibile bears a suspicious resemblance to that of his teacher's Op. 3 Sonata. Later on, as part of a concluding set of three Paganini compositions, Gold played the Op. 3 Sonata, which in this humorous context amounted to a reprise of the Sivori piece (besides, Paganini's is better).

On his own, Chadario proved to be an extraordinarily sophisticated interpreter of Chopin, filling the Etudes Op. 10, Nos. 5 and 12 and Op. 25, No. 2 with subtle contrasts in dynamics and superbly gauged tempo fluctuations; indeed he manipulates the pedals with greater skill than many far more experienced pianists. For encores, there was more Paganini - the Op. 2 Sonata - and Millockor's nostalgically swooning ode to old Vienna, "The Blue Lagoon."

Gold's latest European tour made eight stops in Austria, Germany, Spain and Italy, using three different pianists, the superb Catalan guitarist Jaume Torrent, and the Camerate Triestina under the direction of Fabrizio Ficiur. Future touring plans include performances in Bulgaria sometime in June and a possible return to the European continent in November.

-Richard S. Ginell , Music Critic

Vienna Concert Disrupted

Excerpt reprinted from the Los Angeles Times

VIENNA, Austria: The political furor surrounding Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider spilled over into the musical sphere Thursday night when a concert by American violinist Joseph Gold and Austrian pianist Kurt Rapf was disrupted by a number of anti-Haider demonstrators.

Blowing police whistles, ringing portable cellphones, rattling keys, and shouting various statements, the demonstrators aimed their fury at Austrian minister of culture Elisabeth Gehrer, who was trying to give a speech in between the musical segments of the opening ceremony for a special exhibition of theatre costumes at the Austrian Theatre Museum. Neither the music, nor the two speakers preceding Ms. Gehrer, were interrupted.

It was most ironic that the demonstration took place in the jam-packed Eroicasaal within the Lobkowitz Palace. After all, it was in this small room that Beethoven himself conducted the first performance of his Eroica Symphony, a revolutionary work that shook the musical world to its roots in 1804 - a fact of which the demonstrators were no doubt aware.

After Gold finished playing Locatelli's Sonata in G, museum director Dr. Helga Dostal's introduction of Ms. Gehrer was greeted with a volley of whistles familiar from the anti-Haider ddemonstrationson previous occasions. Gehrer's speech was frequently interrupted by catcalls which provoked shouting matches between the demonstrators and clearly angered mmembersof the audience. Gehrer just did manage to finish her speech, and the rest of the concert unfolded without incident.

Gold, 53, a resident of California who has performed in Vienna frequently, said that he was rattled to the point where he felt that his subsequent performance of Sarasate's Serenata Andaluza was affected. "It was pretty nerve-racking because you don't know what's going to happen," he said. "They could have thrown things. The room was overcrowded, the fire laws wouldn't allow that kind of thing in the U.S.A."

Currently in the middle of a concert tour of Austria, Germany, Spain and Italy, Gold takes a neutral position on the Haider question while insisting that he would never play in a country that exercises political oppression. . .

-Richard S. Ginell - Special to the Times