Velvet Quality

Violin lullabies from
Rachel Barton Pine -
heard by
HOWARD SMITH

'... soporific, inescapable uniformity.'

Violin Lullabies - Rachel Barton Pine - works by Brahms, Gershwin, Ravel, Schubert and Strauss . © 2013 Cedille Records

Much as I admire the consistent enterprise and immaculate musicianship of thirty-nine-year-old Chicago violin virtuoso Rachel Barton Pine, her latest 79 minute recording of twenty-five lullabies has a soporific, inescapable uniformity.

For me it brings to mind Friedrich Nietzsche's dictum: 'The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.' Others may side with William Blake's conclusion 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom' (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell).

Among Cedille's genre of brief items RBP includes a clutch of widely known berceuses, among them: Brahms' Wiegenlied, No 4, Op 49; Stravinsky's Lullaby from The Firebird; Schubert's Cradle Song Op 98 No 2; Grieg's Vuggevise No 1 from Lyric Pieces Op 38; and Fauré's Berceuse Op 16...