The Hamilton Spectator, June 21, 2002

St. John mesmerizes audience

Hugh Fraser, The Hamilton Spectator

Imagine for a moment, that Bizet's Carmen, that bare-foot gypsy girl who had enough fiery charms at her disposal to turn every male head, heart and halo into an unthinking, helpless, sinful creature, suddenly grabbed a Stradivarius violin and, instead of husking out a seductive habanera, tore into Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.

Lara St. John and her Stradivarius -- the Windsor/Weinstein her brother used to play, I do believe -- had very much the same effect Sunday night in Liuna Station as the Brott Festival's three-concert Tchaikovsky tribute reached its midpoint on a steamy, humid evening that became positively tropical with passionate heat as St. John burned up the stage.

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.

It was fast, ferocious and yet, suddenly, it would become -- here the beginning of the Canzonetta was sublime -- delicate, wistful, almost reflective before being put back on the boil to spill over all the normal barriers of taste and restraint once more. Far from being a studied recital of a well-worn warhorse of the classical mainstream, the piece seemed almost improvised, with notes bent to shape passionate ends like gypsies and bluesmen do routinely.

It is very rare and absolutely riveting to see someone so young, take over, take charge of -- appropriate is not too strong a word -- a classical masterpiece and use it as a vehicle for a totally personal statement with such mature and confident poise. The vast majority of the audience was thrilled by it all, wildly applauding the first movement and rising to a spontaneous and almost awed standing ovation at the end.

Others hardly recognized an old favorite and felt the loss of the old friend deeply, much as Shakespeare in modern dress is greeted with such outrage by some. I confess I was spellbound by the wild and heady ride.

Brott, who looked, and perhaps even felt, as if he was caught in the midst of a maelstrom, brilliantly managed to accompany music that was as slippery as mercury and seemed as if it could go in any direction at any moment.