Ottawa Citizen, March 15, 1998 Fiddling with Passion: Lara St. John's playing lives up to her come-hither image by Richard Perry For contemporary men, one of the most confounding obstacles to answering the age-old question "what do women want" arises from the contradiction between policy statement and presentation of self. Modern women quite reasonably claim that they resent being seen as objects that exist only to arouse and satisfy the male gaze, that their dimensions as human beings extend far beyond any perception of them as reproductive and erotic agents. Yet at the same time, given the opportunity for broad public exposure, so many women - particularly younger women who might otherwise reap the rewards gained by aging feminist pioneers - seem compelled to exhibit as much sinuosity and ripeness as possible for the public gaze. What are we to make, in 1998, of the extremely talented, Canadian-born violinist Lara St. John, who poses nude, with her violin held up to hide her breasts, for the cover of her Bach disc, and whose long blond hair drapes down to cover an exposed breast on her subsequent disc, a collection of music with a Gypsy flair. Is this an act of liberation, or a tease to attract the male gaze? Or is it simply a media ploy to create some cross-over sizzle, to attract curious Gen-Xers who might wonder what this nymphet with the fiddle's all about, or to grab the attention of jaded, middle-aged, classical record reviewers? Interviewed on PBS's All Things Considered, Lara St. John couldn't understand what all the fuss was about; after all, she quickly pointed out, Bach's music is sensual and emotional, and the fellow did have 22 children. Musically, the happy truth is that the precocious Curtis Institute graduate who won prizes at the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition (1984) and at a number of smaller contests, hardly needs to cash in on her photogenic qualities. Having made her debut with the Gulbenkian Orchestra (Lisbon) at the age of 10, she subsequently studied with many of the great violin teachers: Arnold Steinhardt, Jascha Brodsky, David Takeno, Rafael Druian and Felix Galamir. Ms. St. John's two CDs on the small, Berkeley-based label Well-Tempered Productions prove that she is an extremely arresting string player with personality to burn. Not merely another young fiddler with immaculate, machine-drilled technique, she demonstrates a performance style of rare and rather astonishing intensity. Every lover of violin music respects J.S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, and probably has experienced them - perhaps in the esteemed recordings by Arthur Grumiaux, Nathan Milstein, Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, Henryk Szeryng, Monica Huggett, or Yehudi Menuhin - as masterpieces of musical architecture, spiritual focus, and pedagogic comprehensiveness. Yet none of these fine and famous recordings quite prepare us for the excoriating adventure that Ms. St. John makes of the music. Regarding the lengthy Chaconne that completes the Partita No. 2 and elevates it to the top of Parnassus, Brahms once wrote: "If I imagine that I could have created, even conceived of the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind." Prior to Ms. St. John's performance, I have never heard a reading of the Chaconne - not even the keenly exigent ones of Josef Szigeti or Oleg Kagan - that quite explained and embodied Brahms' terrible awe. Lara St. John adds to the superb technique and control of intonation required for this music an acute fervor that is quite extraordinary. Not one perfunctory moment dulls the febrillity of the performance nor retards the propulsive, forward-leaning energy that pulls the artist and listener through Bach's creative imagination. Yet Ms. St. John never loses control, and she captures a fine balance between the pulse of dance rhythms and the suspension of time - a fulcrum point where Bach's music and Indian bronzes of Shiva Nataraj meet. Her intonation is excellent, her double-stopping is expressive rather than just adroit, and the coloring given to phrases rings with credible, dramatic life. I highly recommend this disc to anyone who loves Bach's solo violin music, or who would like to come to know the music in performances that are full of re-creative imagination and free of all pedantry.