The Halifax Chronicle Herald, September 25, 2002

VOILINIST ST JOHN IRRESISTIBLE

By Stephen Pederson

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.

Tuesday night in the Cohn at the opening concert of the Symphony Nova Scotia season, St John played Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto as though whe was improvising it. Her wholesale commitment to the music, her abandonment of the Soloist Personality, made her playing intensely personal. Awaiting her next entries she paced her small clearing between the musicians and the edge of the stage like a caged panther.

St John swooned her way through the lyrical phrases at the start of the first movement as though dizzy with ecstasy. This Chagall-like distortion gave way to passages of hair-raising savagery as she launched herself into the second tune. The wildness in the music found its expression in the wildness that sweeps through her playing. You couldn't take your ears off her.