I was glad to connect with violinist Paul Huang, who will be performing with pianist Helen Huang in Takoma Park on February 1 at 7pm, part of the Anna H. Wang Concert Series.
Evan Keely: It will be so good to have you back in the Washington area, though of course you’ve been here many times, performing at the Kennedy Center, Strathmore, and other venues. I so enjoyed being there for your 2022 recital with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott at the Barns at Wolf Trap (a recording of which was later featured on WETA Classical’s Front Row Washington).
You and pianist Helen Huang (I want to mention to our readers that there’s no family relation), with whom you’ll be featured in the Anna H Wang concert, have enjoyed a decade-long creative partnership. In addition to having performed live together many times — including all over North America as well as in Singapore — your debut album, Kalidescope, was released last October on the Naïve label.
Earlier this month, your second recording collaboration, Mirrors, made its appearance.
What do you want our readers to know about this musical partnership — what you’ve learned from one another, highlights of your work together, and any plans for the future you wish to disclose?
Paul Huang: My duo partnership with Helen has been a musically gratifying and significant one in my career. Over the years, we also have a much deeper understanding of each other’s musical strength to come up with this particular pairing of the Prokofiev and Poulenc Sonatas. Helen, in my opinion, has a special range of palette of piano sounds that can be delicate and crisp, but has the capacity to be powerful and earthy when need be and this combination is really perfect for this particular album. This big range of sound palette really affects and inspires my music making as a string player, because I’m always looking for that contrast which sometimes is harder to achieve on a string instrument (and without overpowering!). For me, the duo combination of violin and piano is the hardest combination to find a symbiotic ground of sounds that can co-exist and complement each other. In the Prokofiev in particular, moments like the beginning of the third movement where the piano’s delicate stream-like gesture handing to the violin line, or the last movement where piano and violin often have the same material, where the balancing of voicing without compromising the power and the earthy quality that the music calls for are crucial, are the moments that really influence each of our musical responses and sound production. Music making at the highest level is often without words, and certainly the symbiotic musical language that both Helen and I speak now is one step towards that height that we are both striving for. Our next recording together will be out in 2027, so look out for it then!
EK: One of the pieces featured on the Mirrors album — and we’ll hear the two of you play it in the Anna H. Wang concert — is the Violin Sonata by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), composed during World War II in memory of Federico García Lorca. This piece can be thought of as a musical meditation on some timeless themes: war, dislocation, loss, memory, but also hope and gratitude. What are your thoughts on this, and how this piece is relevant for our times?
PH: Music has an unparalleled capacity to capture the essence of human experience, to echo the depths of our emotions, and to provide solace and reflection in times of uncertainty. Poulenc’s Violin Sonata encapsulates this profound ability, offering a poignant reflection on the past while resonating deeply with our present. This Sonata is in a way like programmatic music. While Poulenc was trapped in occupied France during the war, he wrote this sonata as a response to fascism and dedicated this sonata to the memory of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca who was shot by fascists during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Throughout the sonata, one will hear the constant struggle and a sense of duality of major and minor keys shifting back and forth, while every once a while some really gorgeous and sweet melodies surface amidst the chaos. At the end of each of the three movements, there is a very distinct striking pizzicato from the violin that emulates the sound of bullets. The sound of pizzicato also becomes a metaphor for the sound of guitar and uses one of Lorca’s quotes in the slow movement: “the sound of guitars make dreams sweep.” The sonata ends with a striking pizzicato chord, leaving the listeners to ponder our own role in the unfolding story of humanity.
EK: The program of your Anna H. Wang concert features two French composers — Poulenc, and Maurice Ravel — and two Americans, one deceased and the other living: Harry Burleigh (1866-1949) and John Corigliano (b. 1938). What do you like about having these pieces together? How do the works contrast with and complement one another, and how do you and Helen Huang approach these similarities and differences? (I did get to hear you play the Corigliano in the aforementioned concert with the amazing Ms. McDermott, and I’m looking forward to hearing you in it again, with a different — and also fantastic — collaborator.)
PH: In a way, the program was constructed with the Ravel’s Violin Sonata in mind and the programing idea grew out of it. Ravel was deeply influenced by American jazz and thus included the “Blues” in this sonata middle movement as an experiment to his compositional capacity. That’s why we wanted to highlight the cross culture influences between France and America. That’s why this program included French music in the first half and American music in the second half. More than the differences, I often think that music is influenced by one and another. These composers have written so well in the music, it would most be just enough to just be at the service of what the composers have intended in the music, and add just a little bit of our own “personality” to these works. Certainly, I think Poulenc, Burleigh, and Corigliano are pieces that are less familiar to the general audience, so we are very excited to introduce them to the DC audience.
EK: Are you still playing the 1742 Guarneri del Gesù violin that had belonged for a time to Henryk Wieniawski? What can you tell us about this instrument and your relationship with it?
PH: I’ve been fortunate enough to have had this legendary instrument with me for the last 10 years or so. It is part of my body by this point. As you mentioned, it is indeed Wieniawski’s favorite violin and one that he used until his death. So many of Wieniawski’s greatest compositions (the concertos and the many concert pieces...etc.) were composed with the sound of this violin in mind. I find that this violin is a perfect violin for me is because it has the sizzling and sweet sounds that I often associate with a Stradivari violin, and yet the depth and dark (almost infinite depth!) warm sound that I only find in a Guarneri del Gesù violin. So it is kind of a miracle that this violin has both spectrum of sounds. As you can imagine that this really enhances the color palette range for the artist. It’s like a painter with infinite color possibilities!
WETA Passport
Stream tens of thousands of hours of your PBS and local favorites with WETA Passport whenever and wherever you want. Catch up on a single episode or binge-watch full seasons before they air on TV.