Vilde Frang

Press

• Bertrand Chamayou (piano) Belcea Quartet (ensemble)

  Festival Ravel, Eglise Saint-Pierre, France

  Aug 2023

  • ★★★★★ Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata for two solo violins is a huge work, almost as long as the Chausson, that Vilde Frang and the quartet’s leader, Corinne Belcea, negotiated with relish and technical brilliance. In the languid opening movement they traded tunes, played follow-my-leader and let the Belgian composer’s melodies intertwine sweetly as they teased the audience with the joy of their interplay. The stripped back Allegretto that followed gave way to a rewarding Allegro finale. Music of this work’s prolixity is not guaranteed to enthral and it will only succeed if the players are comparable in brilliance and musical insight – as was the case here.

    • Bachtrack
    • 31 August 2023

• Elgar Violin Concerto

  City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

  Mar 2023

  • The accomplished Norwegian soloist Vilde Frang took command with her poignantly thoughtful entry and played with consistent expressivity throughout. The eloquently pensive cadenza to the final movement, the soloist’s evocative arabesques accompanied by the gentle thrumming of orchestral strings, at last found soloist and conductor in perfect harmony.

    • The Standard
    • 17 March 2023

• Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1

  London Symphony Orchestra

  Feb 2023

  • I reviewed Frang’s performance of Bartök’s First Violin Concerto in Berlin Philharmonie with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski in September last year, saying it was ‘a terrific performance of huge virtuosity and élan, entirely convincing at every turn,’ and the same could easily apply to her performance of the Shostakovich First with Payare. The long lines of the expansive opening Nocturne (marked ‘Moderato’) carried huge weight, while the orchestra offered a chthonic underpinning thanks to the eight double basses. Frang’s sound was positively smoky at the opening; her core sound was slightly wiry (but not for one second thin), which suited the melodies perfectly, while her lower register was positively throaty. Most important of all was the way Frang understood Shostakovich’s lines; Payare, meanwhile, proved himself the perfect partner with her throughout. There was a timelessness about this performance that was absolutely transfixing, while Frang’s playing was notable for the sheer purity of her intervals within the line (the sustained high note at the movement’s end was also the finest I have heard live). The fierce Scherzo was a riot of energy. Virtuoso, certainly, but utterly relentless – and how Payare assured definition in the lower strings at speed. How different the Passacaglia, with its softening. Daniel Jemison’s bassoon solos were particularly noteworthy, as was the combined insight of Frang and Payare in seeing the piece as one great cumulative, carefully calibrated uncurling (Frang’s stopping, too, was so perfectly in tune). The rapport of soloist and conductor extended into the Burlesque finale – Shostakovich’s writing here is merciless, his demands for co-ordination between violin and orchestra almost insuperable – and it was just this element that spurred Frang and Payare to edge-of-the-seat antics.

    • Seen and Heard International
    • 25 February 2023

• Bartók Violin Concerto No. 1

  Budapest Festival Orchestra

  Nov 2022

  • The soloist, Norwegian Vilde Frang, seemed to emphasise the pained and unrequited love that Bartók felt towards the work’s dedicatee, the not-yet 20-year-old violinist Stefi Geyer, with the warm intensity of her opening D major seventh chord, repeated many times later by the gradually entering divided string sections of the orchestra.... It cannot be said that the soloist surprised anyone with the beautifully controlled density of her vibrato or the earnestness of her interpretation, for her attitude towards the compositions she chooses to perform is unfailingly sincere, respectful, yet looking for uncharted musical solutions. She meticulously followed the score’s detailed instructions, whilst creating her own interpretation, which was as memorable as it was unique.

    • Bachtrack
    • 16 November 2022

• Berg Violin Concerto

  San Francisco Symphony Orchestra

  Apr 2022

  • This was as gentle, warm, and lyrical a rendition as could be asked for of a work that already tends in that direction, having been composed as a memorial for Alma Mahler’s 18-year-old daughter, whom Berg had known well, and also — as it turned out — for Berg himself, who died only four months after completing it. Frang’s silky and long-breathed playing was quiet, even shy, yet always audible.

    • San Francisco Classical Voice
    • 02 May 2022

• Britten Violin Concerto

  London Symphony Orchestra

  Mar 2020

  • ★★★★★ In an exceptional account of the work, Vilde Frang seemed not so much to play it as to live it, etching every phrase with uncompromising emotional directness, while Pappano’s conducting veered between restless energy and relentless momentum. The whole thing was overwhelming and unforgettable.

    • The Guardian
    • 16 March 2020

  • ★★★★★ The violinist Vilde Frang’s purity of tone, whistling harmonics and sobbing lower register sang clearly through the strafing of timpani and cymbals in the concerto. Frang’s playing was vividly emotional, her candour and connection to the orchestra riveting.

    • The Times
    • 16 March 2020

  • ★★★★★ They are rebuked now by a violinist of supreme intelligence, one who holds the perfect Apollonian poise between passion and precision, alert in her slightly other-worldly way to what the orchestra is doing around her, miraculously attuned to the chamber-music she is sometimes asked to make with her fellow strings. In the dying fall after the many turns of the screw to Britten's passacaglia variations for the epic third movement, Frang took us on an out-of-body journey, never overdoing the major-minor oscillations which can sometimes seem self-pitying. The partnership with Pappano and the orchestra was breathtaking, sometimes quite literally so.

    • Arts Desk
    • 16 March 2020