Violeta Vicci’s Mirror Images

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Gramola’s upcoming release Mirror Images [GRAM98010] features works for solo violin and viola and one intriguingly Eastern-inflected cantilena for solo voice performed by violinist Violeta Vicci.

The album includes Ragnar Söderlind’s Elegia II for Solo Violin; J.S. Bach’s Partita in E Major for Solo Violin and the Sarabande from J. S. Bach Suite No. 5 in C Minor; Imogen Holst’s Suite for Solo Viola, Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata in A Minor Op. 27, No. 2 “A Jacques Thibaud” and a Vocalise by Jean-Louis Florentz.

Violeta Vicci’s accomplishments are both those of a violinist/violist gifted as a fine interpreter of traditional and new music and as an improvisational artist with a penchant for the intricacies of quarter-tone music.

Vicci’s playing of Ragnar Söderlind’s Elegia II for Solo Violin is impressive. She excels in both J.S. Bach’s Partita in E Major for Solo Violin and the Sarabande from the Suite No. 5 in C Minor, and in both instances her playing is idiomatically apt, clean of execution, and eloquently rendered.

Such is also the case with the young artist’s felicitous playing of Eugène Ysaÿe’s four-movement Sonata in A Minor Op. 27, No. 2 – dedicated to another great violinist, Jacques Thibaud – whose Late Romantic idiom Vicci embraces with lyrical purity of tone and expansiveness.

Imogen Holst’s bucolic Suite for Solo Viola is deftly taken up by Vicci who mines the capabilities of her second instrument potential for mimicking the sound of an English country fiddle.

Mirror Images was produced at Space Mountain Studios in Spain, with recording, editing, mixing and mastering by Jon Alexander Audio. 

Rafael de Acha ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”