The energy was high at the Cal Performances debut of the outstanding young violinist Njioma Chinyere Grevious on Sunday afternoon. There are standing ovations that bubble up slowly (and sometimes with some reluctance), and then there are instantaneous ovations — and that is what the big crowd in Hertz Hall gave Grevious and collaborative pianist Andrew Goodridge after their passionate reading of Beethoven’s great “Kreutzer” Sonata, Op. 47.
Grevious, a native of Boston and graduate of The Juilliard School, holds distinguished accolades from the Concert Artists Guild (the 2023 grand prize) and the Sphinx Competition (first prize and audience choice award in the 2023 senior division), and just this year, she received a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Her recital in Berkeley opened with a suite for solo violin by the late Black American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (not to be confused with either the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge or the late-Romantic composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor — whose violin concerto can be heard on YouTube in Grevious’s prize-winning performance with the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra).
Perkinson dedicated his Blue/s Forms to Sanford Allen, the first full-time African American violinist in the New York Philharmonic, and the composition inflects the long history of solo violin suites with a rich infusion of traditional African American and jazz tonalities. Rife with technical challenges (big chords, smoking-fast runs, left-hand pizzicato — all met here with aplomb and mastery), the suite sounds at times like Niccolò Paganini by way of an Appalachian fiddle fest, ending up in a smoky New York jazz club.
Grevious plays with a sensitive and supple bow arm, deep in the core of the violin’s strings for a tone that is both strong and active — a big sound that never gets stuck in its own power. In the muted middle movement of Perkinson’s suite (“Just Blue/s”), she pulled from the instrument a plangent pianissimo that drew listeners in — a lovely contrast to her bold virtuosity in the other movements.
Grevious was then joined by Goodridge for Mozart’s two-movement Violin Sonata in E Minor, K. 304. The first movement was played with attention to the powerful contrasts in mood, Grevious obviously reveling in the score’s alternation of delicacy with sudden outbursts of intense passion. The second movement has an entirely different character: a deceptive minuet that becomes a lyrical and elegiac meditation.
The second half of the recital was entirely consumed by the “Kreutzer” Sonata, a giant piece packed with Beethoven’s characteristically intense demands on performers and audience alike. (He wrote the sonata in a short break from working on the stormy “Eroica” Symphony.) As has been notably explored in a book by poet Rita Dove, the sonata probably should now be subtitled not for violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer — who reputedly disliked it — but for its first dedicatee, the mixed-race violinist George Bridgetower, who soon after had a falling-out with the composer.
Grevious and Goodridge gave the Beethoven a passionate and skillful reading, both players mastering the sonata’s daunting challenges — constant shifts of mood, breathless full-speed runs bracketing moments of quiet, lyrical introspection. It’s no wonder audience members leapt to their feet at the end. Given the unusual number of young people in the hall, many may have been hearing the “Bridgetower” for the first time and were rightly captured by the excitement and commitment of the performance.
In the responsive acoustic of the venue, however, the violin was too often covered by the piano — a big concert Steinway with the lid fully raised. If contrast is at the heart of Beethoven, the soft passages need to be heard in both instruments. Adding to the imbalance was Goodridge’s emphasis on the piano’s percussive and driving force more than its lyricism — which wasn’t always the right match for Grevious’s expressive range.
I hope that Grevious returns soon and often to the San Francisco Bay Area. Cal Performances snagged the debut of a talented, gracious, and engaging violinist.
