Lara St. John - Reviews

With Paavo Jarvi

Well, if you couldn't make it to the concert, here you can read what you missed.
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Live performance reviews

Berkshire Eagle, August 14, 2003

She made the most of this dizzying, dazzling showpiece, digging into the gaudy themes with an unabashedly gaudy presentation that seemed to say, "I know this is silly, but I'm going to milk it for all it's worth." She did.

Toronto Star, July 15, 2003

Passion, poise and panache. Canadian violinist Lara St. John offered those and other considerable virtues at her Brott Festival concert and it was more than enough to send home a full house at the Du Maurier Theatre in a state of bliss.

Her playing of concertos by Bach and Prokofiev, at concert number five in the summer-long festival series at venues mostly in the Hamilton area, was exceptional, and in the case of Prokofiev's second concerto, electrifying.

Hamilton Spectator, July 15, 2003

St. John, brilliant throughout, held the audience spellbound. Brooding, intense, fiery, passionate, satiric and witty were but a few of the moods she drew out of the 1779 "Salabue" Guadagnini violin.

The Tampa Tribune, May 10, 2003

[...] Lara St. John, whose commanding presence and powerful playing lingered long into the night. The 6-foot virtuoso set the piece on fire from the onset: She created a treacherous tone in the first movement, delivering a searing, slashing sound on her 1779 Guadagnini instrument, slamming the breaks on double stops, twisting rhythms into impossible positions and projecting an almost primal sense of tension and release.

Her account of [the] slow movement was incisive and spirited, and she cut into the finale with demonic concentration. If St. John threatened to go over the top with her frenetic views, she kept grounded, sculpting a performance full of confidence and solid musicianship.

St. Petersburg Times, May 10, 2003

Lara St. John is a natural-born soloist, and her performance of the Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto was the highlight of Friday night's concert by the Florida Orchestra.

St. John, a Junoesque six-footer, is a tempestuous stage presence, moving around a lot and tossing her long blond hair, but she has rock-solid technique, such as the superb intonation she displayed in some passages in the first movement that were extremely testing in that regard.

News Sentinel, Knoxville, April 25, 2003

Far from one of those concertos in which the soloist gets to impress fellow musicians and the audience with blazing virtuosity and gorgeous, lyrical passages, St. John willingly got into the down and dirty business of Shostakovich's musical retaliation against Soviet officials who were too bull-headed and stupid to get its meaning, although the Russian public certainly wasn't.

The News Tribune, Tacoma, March 24, 2003

The Canadian violinist St. John is a bombshell whose marketing strategy is her sex appeal. But her wet red lips and shiny blood-red dress paled compared with the sound of her richly resonant 1779 Guadagnini.

She made the central slow movements of Bach's A minor and E major concertos gleam. Her tone had heft and lyricism, with dashes of animating moxie.

In the oversized E major first movement and the A minor's third movement, St. John bowed ferociously, emphasizing the bookends of rapid phrases and shading the interior notes. These were powerful, distinctive readings, full of life, that one longed to hear again.

News Journal, Delaware, February 7, 2003

St. John handled the often sere, high solo passages thoughtfully and with solid technique.

The New York Times, December 13, 2002

[...] played with a rounded, singing tone by Lara St. John.

The Globe and Mail, December 6, 2002

And, given the short rehearsal time to prepare this 45-minute opus, the musicians of Music Toronto Chamber Society did a superb job. Both St. Johns -- Lara on fiddle and brother Scott moving from violin over to viola -- attacked the work with real fire, and allowed us to hear the many structural motifs of the work clearly and effectively.

Portland Press Herald, November 14, 2002

Canadian violinist Lara St. John lived up to her advance publicity Tuesday night, in a striking performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor (Op.64) with the Portland Symphony Orchestra under Toshiyuki Shimada.

The Halifax Chronicle Herald, September 25, 2002

Lara St John is a tall, statuesque woman with the face of a movie star. None of this gets in the way when she plays the violin. On stage a feral passion for the music she is playing transforms her into a compelling, irresistible force.

The Hamilton Spectator, June 21, 2002

Pacing to and fro as if she wanted to get down from the stage and pour the music right into every stunned ear, St. John simply made Tchaikovsky's masterpiece her very own song, spilling into it all her passionate rages, contempt for mere convention and impatience for everything but the stripped-down truth.

The Montreal Gazette, June 4, 2002

Despite her reputation as a photogenic firebrand, this Canadian is a thoughtful and discriminating musician. The tone she applied to the music was pure, silky and well within the boundaries of current baroque taste.

The Montreal Gazette, April 8, 2002

St. John by herself opened the concert with class. Her very musical performance of Bach's Sonata in G Minor for unaccompanied violin, BWV 1001, proved thoroughly satisfying in style and interpretation.

New York Times, February 26, 2002

[...] and a 1994 Concertino by Elena Kats-Chernin, a piece that didn't give enough scope to its high-powered soloist, the violinist Lara St. John, although she played what there was with a brilliant ferocity.

Gramophone, February 2002

She has a sleek and silvery tone, favours fleet tempos, and applies vibrato judiciously.

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