Kluxen & Pouliot - Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto

CHRISTIAN KLUXEN, conductor BLAKE POULIOT, violin Missy Mazzoli: Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major Nielsen: Symphony No. 2 “The Four Temperaments” “Oh, how difficult it is to make anyone see and feel in music what we see and feel ourselves.” Early, temperamental reactions to his Violin Concerto must have stung Tchaikovsky, but it’s now a firm favourite of countless violinists, including Canada’s Blake Pouliot. A set of comic portraits of personality types, or temperaments, triggered Nielsen to recreate them in musical form, from the introverted (melancholic and phlegmatic) to the extroverted (choleric and sanguine). Composer Missy Mazzoli’s mesmeric Sinfonia is music ‘in the shape of the solar system,’ weaving and coiling itself in a sequence of pulsing loops.