Rachel Lee Priday knew she would make a career in music writes SHIRLEY GUELLER.
How many children ask for a violin as a birthday gift at the age of four? Well Rachel Lee Priday, who will play a recital on 27 October 2018 for the Cape Town Concert Series in South Africa, is one of the few.
Ms Priday was first here in South Africa in 2016 when she undertook a concert tour, playing with orchestras including the CPO around the country.
Her only appearance this time in Cape Town will be for the Cape Town Concert Series, for sadly orchestral dates didn’t work here. However, both audiences in Durban and Johannesburg audiences will have the chance to be entranced by her Brahms.
She’s glad to be back.
“My last tour left such a deep impact on me – I felt a great connection with audiences and I was very excited to travel to many cities within the country. It was a real adventure. I am so happy to be back again for this tour and I look forward to making music with the orchestras, as well as reuniting with pianist Bryan Wallick for our Cape Town recital.”
Just before leaving for South Africa she recorded her debut recital album, with works by Mozart, Schubert, Wolfgang Rihm, Arvo Part, Fauré, and Sayo Kosugi.
Recital and chamber music concerts
She loves recitals as much as she loves playing with orchestras. “In recent years I have been doing quite a lot of recital and also chamber music concerts in addition to solo orchestral concerts. I have always loved the energy of the full orchestra. A recital is a much more intimate experience altogether, so it is difficult to compare. I feel that doing both is most fulfilling and the variety is important to me.”
Although there’s a lot of musical talent in her family, she says, she is the only one who plays professionally. Her mother sang from the age of three and was an amateur pianist, her father plays the guitar. So what are the chances that her 15-month old daughter Phoebe, who was sadly left at home in New York, will be a musician?
Having Phoebe has changed her whole perspective on life and music. “It has deepened and coloured my understanding of music. In the minuet movement, for example, of the Mozart E minor Sonata I’ll be playing in Cape Town, I hear the purity and love between a mother and child.”
Cape Town audiences will be lucky enough to experience this purity in her interpretation of this work, and also the other works in her programme – sonatas by Strauss and Janacek and the Introduction of Rondo Capriccioso by Saint-Saëns.
Violinist Rachel Lee Priday has been widely acclaimed for her beauty of tone. Her riveting stage presence, and “irresistible panache”, according to the Chicago Tribune, has won her friends all over the world from major international orchestras such as the Chicago, Seattle, and National Symphony Orchestras, as well as in recitals at the Lincoln Center and Ravinia’s ‘Rising Stars’.
She also appears in Europe and Asia in festivals such as Verbier and recently undertook a tour of China where she combined outreach with performances. Rachel made her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997 when nine, and apart from a stint after she studied graduated from Harvard when she worked at The New Yorker magazine, she has always played music. And having tried something else, she says, “I can say for sure that I don’t regret my choice to be a musician!”
Indeed, Ms Priday has a very rich musical life. “I’m lucky to be able to look back and appreciate a range of career highlights – all the way from playing for some legendary figures like Isaac Stern when I was very young, to my debuts in Chicago and Berlin, to recording my first album this month. I look back on certain performances as particularly satisfying – I loved playing Sinfonia Concertante in concert a couple years ago, and there have been certain chamber music performances where the chemistry and interpretive process culminated in something very memorable in the concert. I am also very happy to have been involved in commissioning several fantastic composers and premiering their works. The Sonata by Christopher Cerrone, the 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist, was an exceptional collaboration, for instance.”
Who: Rachel Lee Priday violin, Bryan Wallick piano
What: Cape Town Concert Series recital
Where: Baxter Concert Hall, Cape Town, South Africa
When: 27 October 2018 at 8pm
Rachel Lee Priday concert: www.ctconcerts.co.za
Book: https://bit.ly/2MfXMO4
WS
