The violinist Maria Ioudenitch – born in Russia, raised in Kansas City, and trained at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute and Boston’s New England Conservatory – won three major international competitions in 2021/22: the Ysaÿe in Belgium, the Tibor Varga in Switzerland, and the Joachim in Germany. Part of her prize for the last of these was the opportunity to record this debut album, Songbird, for Warner Classics.
With pianist Kenny Broberg she has chosen a lyrical programme inspired – as the album’s name’s suggests – by song. It brings together music by 19th and 20th century composers from western Europe, Russia and the USA: Robert Schumann; Clara Schumann; Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel; Nadia Boulanger; Amy Beach; Tchaikovsky; Medtner; Rachmaninoff; Glinka; Schubert, and Strauss (the sublime song ‘Morgen’, for which Ioudenitch and Broberg are joined by the young German soprano Theresa Pilsl).
“I really gravitate towards the human singing voice,” explains Maria Ioudenitch, “and find lots of inspiration for how I shape my sound … I’ve discovered there is so much to learn as an instrumentalist, for example, about how notes relate to one another … It is through singers that I learned that one held note can have many different kinds of expression, as it sits on different harmonies and transforms into the next note. Another reason the album concept came easily to me is that my recital programmes usually include short works – little gems that are either unknown, overlooked, or forgotten from the past.” She adds that: “Some of the pieces are arrangements, and others are untouched songs, where I just play the vocal line. The rest are not actual songs but they’re very lyrical and I thought they would fit beautifully into the programme.”
Maria comes from an intensely musical family – both her parents are pianists and she started to learn the violin at the age of three. “During my childhood, my family would listen together to arias and operas. My grandfather would sit me down and put on twelve different recordings of the same aria, and then test me on who the singers were and which recordings were the best! So there’s some history there … I don’t want to simply copy what a singer would do. First of all, that’s impossible. Secondly, there are the unique qualities of a string instrument that can add a different dimension – for example, really connecting notes and phrases without the need to take a breath, or not having to employ clear diction to help enunciate the words … My favourite part of working on the programme [for Songbird] was finding a sound that resembles singing. How can I develop the sound in a way a singer would? How do I create consonants and vowels? How does text influence fingerings and bowings?”
The violin she plays on the album is 1691 Guarneri, whereas the instrument she used when she won the Joachim Competition, playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, was a Stradivarius that Joseph Joachim himself is reputed to have used when he gave the premiere of Brahms’ masterwork in 1879.
As Maria told The Strad: “It’s always been a dream of mine to record an album. And with Warner giving me quite a lot of freedom, I was able to realise that dream ... I’m making no statement other than that I have such a deep love for these pieces. All I wanted was to highlight the special relationship between the voice and the violin, while introducing rarely heard works and sharing another side of the ones we already know and love.”
