CLASSICAL
Violinist James Ehnes loves returning to Houston.
James Ehnes wasn’t expecting to play with the Houston Symphony this fall. But it would have happened sooner or later — it’s one of his favorite places to play, he affirms.
Beyond the orchestra’s worldclass reputation, “my experience is that it’s a really nice group of people that care an extraordinary amount about what they do,” the Canadian-born violinist says.
“I’ve always felt that they have a particular eagerness to make every performance and every experience really the best that it can be,” he adds, “and I’ve really just enjoyed that sense of … shared camaraderie — and shared responsibility, really, to always create a very special product.”
Ehnes, 44, figures he’s played with the Houston Symphony every two or three years since the beginning of this century. This weekend he’ll be performing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” and Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor — a favorite of his two kids, ages 6 and 8, “by far.”
“It’s so immediately appealing,” Ehnes says of the Mendelssohn. “It’s beautiful and it’s exciting, and it’s an optimistic and uplifting piece. It starts sort of in storm and drama and ends in total triumph.”
So much so that Ehnes calls it the “perfect concerto.”
“It has all of the elements that one could wish for,” he says. “It’s got these incredibly beautiful and memorable melodies, it’s very virtuosic and exciting, there’s wonderful interplay with the orchestra.”
“The Lark Ascending,” meanwhile, is a stalwart of the U.K. repertoire that’s not done nearly as often on these shores.
“It taps into certain kind of emotions that, if we could really talk about (or) describe music we wouldn’t need it, right?” Ehnes says. “But there’s something so specific in that piece; it’s a certain kind of beauty and nostalgia. It creates an atmosphere that is really cinematic, I would say, without being specific.”
Ehnes grew up in a musical household in Brandon, Manitoba, and began studying the violin at age 5. (“It was just always something that spoke to me, and I didn’t dislike practicing.”) He’s been playing the 1715 Marsick Stradivarius he uses for about 21 years, “so long it feels like a family member, I guess,” he laughs.
This weekend will be one of the few opportunities Ehnes has had to play for a live audience in more than six months. Between early March and mid-September, all of his concerts were virtual. He put a series of solo recordings up for sale on Vimeo, which he calls “kind of a fun experiment.” He helped the Seattle Chamber Music Society, for which he’s been artistic director for a decade, move its summer festival online. They’ll do it again in January.
Despite the significant interruption of his career — he lost a year’s worth of engagements, he says with a sigh — Ehnes chooses to be optimistic. Not just for himself but for what he calls “that whole infrastructure around the performing arts.”
“I think people have learned enormously valuable skills that are going to be a big part of the future,” he says. “And not just in the short-term future, but I think there are certain aspects that are really here to stay. We’ve learned a lot about how to create a really compelling product for online distribution, and I think that that’s a good thing.”