Just 16 years old when these two live recordings were made,
Chloe Chua
has already spent two years as an artist-in-residence with the
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
, and she is definitely looking like a rising star from that part of the world. (The concerts were sellouts.) It was perhaps curiosity about the youngster that put this album on classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2024, but buyers are likely to be pleased with what they get.
Chua
has a restrained tone marked by accuracy over flamboyance, and this is in some of the more flamboyant concertos in the repertory. However, she avoids a studied attitude; she is quite graceful. Her style works especially well in the
Butterfly Lovers Concerto
, a 1959 work from China that listeners may know even if they don't think they do; it is a favorite in figure skating competitions.
's toned-down rendering eliminates much of the socialist-realist-era sentimentalism and emphasizes the novel mixture of Chinese and Western elements in the work. She also does well in
Sunshine over Tashkurgan
by
Chen Gang
, one of the composers of the
; this is a fascinating work in which a Chinese composer treats Central Asian materials as exotic.
is likewise quite restrained in
Paganini
's
Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 6
, a work that some may think was made to be fiery, but
gets all the notes, including the most difficult ones, apparently without breaking a sweat. The
under conductors
Rodolfo Barráez
(in the two Chinese works) and
Mario Venzago
(in the
) lowers the intensity level to correspond with
's playing, and the whole thing hangs together well despite the diversity of repertory and the fact that the album puts together material from different concerts. Is
the next major Asian star? Time will tell, but it is possible. ~ James Manheim