“There are some former wild child stars who, as the years pass by, grow up and grow out of it,” writes Matthew Stadlen in Monday’s (10/19) Daily Telegraph (London). “Others, not so much. For all his commercial success, in this second category belongs Nigel Kennedy, the so-called punk violinist who transitioned from the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School in leafy Surrey, where he was ‘dumped’ at the age of seven, to the mean streets of New York.… At 59 he has lost none of his rebel style, peppering his sentences good-naturedly with swear words and sporting a haircut that might have his favourite composer, Bach, turning in his grave.… If some in the rarified world of classical music have been sniffy at his nonconformism, others have supported his democratization of the scene.… Ever since his multi-million-selling recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in 1989, he’s been breaking the mold. When the album was released, it was the first time pop music techniques had been used on a classical record. Now, a quarter of a century on, he is releasing Vivaldi: The New Four Seasons and is about to record Bach’s notoriously difficult solo violin sonatas.”
Posted October 20, 2015
