Dancing violinist! Pandemonium in the audience!

Here’s a story from my friend David Snead, formerly Vice President of Marketing, Brand and Customer Experience at the New York Philharmonic. And now President and CEO of the Handel and Haydn Society, the plainly terrific chorus and period instrument orchestra in Boston.

David and I were emailing about what classical concerts could be. And in response to something I said, he emailed this:

........the first half ends with our punk red-haired concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky doing a Vivaldi Double Violin Concerto that segues via an improvised bridge into “Summer” from The Four Seasons, which she does Eddie Van Halen-style: dancing around the stage, blazing fast, stopping the orchestra on a dime. . .pause. . . then exploding.  The audience e-rupts. Pandemonium.  The lights come up and one of the donors runs up at me, pointing his finger into my chest, exclaiming “This is how all classical music concerts should be!!”

Violinist Aisslinn Nosky has this effect on people: she makes them better.

Scarlet-haired violinist Aisslinn Nosky is one to watch (in both senses): a young punk of Toronto's neo-baroque scene, a star in her own right, and guest director for Tafelmusik's forthcoming program Baroque Misbehaving, her deportment is reed-like in its easy grace and tensile strength.

Tafelmusik seem to be playing as much for themselves and for each other as for the audience, and having a helluva good time – and we are all the better for it.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/tafelmusik-house-of-dreams-review-exquisite-musicianship-delivered-with-verve-makes-program-soar-20150224-13nam8.html#ixzz3g9lsTnky

The undisputed star of the evening was the amazing violinist Aisslinn Nosky....

The orchestral selection that fared best was “Summer” from Vivaldi’s “Four Sesaons,” with the H&H strings turning in a vividly pictorial and palpably committed reading led by concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky, whose exploratory account of the solo line had enough charisma and flair to earn the group a spontaneous midconcert ovation of an intensity that seemed to surprise even Nosky herself.

No celebration of Handel and Haydn in its current incarnation would be complete without a star turn for the orchestra’s leader, Aisslinn Nosky.  Since coming on board three years ago, the charismatic violinist has become an audience favorite not just for her imaginative interpretations and scorching technique, but for sartorial distinction and a physicality onstage that Mick Jagger might admire.

Standing in the center of the band, but with room to prowl and swoop to the music, Nosky led and soloed in a performance of Vivaldi’s “Summer” that turned the work’s ostensible three movements into a single tone poem that vividly evoked the season’s enervating heat, annoying insects, and sudden showers, while building steadily to a hair-raising final tempest that brought the audience to its feet at the end.

Concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky roused the audience to near frenzy with her solos.

Exuberant program puts the spotlight on Haydn

Aisslinn Nosky energizes SummerFest

Dynamic violinist heats up Haydn and SummerFest Chamber Orchestra

Nosky offered Haydn at his most virile, most persuasive, but also his most playful. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of her ebullient performance was how she was able to impose her personality on the SummerFest Chamber Orchestra, which included an expert first violin section of Kristin Lee (Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Daniel Ching (first violinist of the Miro Quartet) and Cho-Liang Lin (a renowned soloist and SummerFest music director). Those are individuals not known for having retiring musical personalities. But they and the rest of the distinguished ensemble were more than happy to join in Nosky’s lovefest.

Handel and Haydn browses the shelves of Felix Mendelssohn

Concert Review: Handel and Haydn Society authentic in Baroque performance

Led by violinist Aisslinn Nosky, the Handel and Haydn Society brought new life to Vivaldi and other Italian composers.

Violins Take Center Stage in a Repertory Reincarnated

Indeed, the principal allure of the arrangement was in the contrasting sounds and styles of three excellent soloists from the ensemble’s ranks: Julia Wedman, Patricia Ahern and Aisslinn Nosky.

Watching concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky perform was akin to watching an expert circus artist climb, contort, fly through the air, and stick her landing. The sheer virtuosity, dexterity, and communication required for the violinist to lead Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G Major was evident in the score, but looking at Nosky, one would have thought she spent no effort steering the orchestra and conjuring colorful cadenzas, doing it all with a smile. Mozart composed the concerto when he was still a teenager, and it is saturated with youthful exuberance. Whether the moment called for nimble and flashy or long and lyrical, Nosky played with passion and immediacy, and the orchestra followed her example. She engaged the audience, trilling in the violin’s highest register and quirking her eyebrows, and shrugging when the piece ended with a simple oboe farewell instead of a violin flourish. Her new cherry red ringmaster’s coat was just icing on the cake.

Handel and Haydn artistic director Harry Christophers conducted the other pieces on the program, all of which were by Mozart’s good friend Haydn. Nosky, Christophers, and Haydn are well matched in their ebullience and flair for musical jests — anything that shakes the listener’s ear out of autopilot. An arterial oboe line anchored the ambling Andante second movement of the evening’s opening, Symphony No. 26, “Lamentatione.” In the third movement, sudden accented chords made some people jump in their seats. Haydn’s still got some surprises left in him.

The second half began with the Overture in D Major from a larger, lost work, and it’s a shame that work is lost if it had even half the excitement of its surviving fragment. Only a few minutes long, it took the orchestra on a madcap ride through hairpin turns in the strings and frisky accents in the brass.