Jennifer Pike

Wigmore Hall Residency: 'Soul Strings' with Jennifer Pike

January 2023

On stage were the brothers Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, two great performers on the sarod...on their right perched on a chair was violinist Jennifer Pike, who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2002 and has since blossomed into a soloist of searching musical intelligence – as was evidenced by this concert, in which she played alongside the three Indian musicians.

To prepare the ground for this meeting of two playing styles, Pike gave a pleasingly light, effortless performance of the opening Preludio from Bach’s 3^rd Partita. She then absented herself from the stage, to allow the three Indian musicians to perform folk melodies from Bengal and Assam, as well as a song by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore. This allowed us to savour the essentially vocal aesthetic shaping those rich twanging notes. The melodic line would aspire upward to a note via a slide, or sink down with graceful melancholy, the tuning wavering expressively – all so different to the cool, clear Western way of shaping a tune.

When Pike joined them to perform two compositions by the brothers’ father and “guru” Amjad Ali Khan, perhaps the best-known sarod player alive, we heard that contrast projected with startling clarity. This isn’t to say Pike hasn’t immersed herself deeply in their style, and doesn’t capture the wayward, spontaneously unfolding nature of Indian melodies. But there was something about her sweetly focussed vibrato and cleanly articulated notes that was miles away from the ecstatic flights of the two brothers. In its modest graceful way Pike’s contribution felt touchingly sincere, and it certainly brought a genuinely singing, sustained quality to the evening.

Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph

Mixing different styles is now a standard musical game, as players borrow alien techniques to freshen up their own. But blending entire classical traditions is an altogether more demanding proposition...Initially Pike [performed] a delicately inflected account of the prelude from Bach’s third Partita. Then it was Amaan and Ayaan’s turn, aided by a tabla player, to do theirs in the form of a composition that started gently, and worked its way up to a fine frenzy. Then, gingerly at first, the four musicians went into what you might call a bi-cultural jam session. There was a certain amount of echoing, as melodies were exchanged between plucked and bowed strings,

Michael Church, iNews ****

Deborah Pritchard 'Calandra' WP and 'The Lark Ascending'

BBC Symphony Orchestra (December 2022)

Jumping back 20 years, we landed in 1920 with the revised version of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, that haunting pastoral romance conceived on the other side of the First World War... nothing prevented the fragile beauty of the bird’s high-flying song from scoring its usual poignant effect. Pike remained airborne for the premiere of the British composer Deborah Pritchard’s BBC commission Calandra, named after a robust lark of the Mediterranean and further east, and in progress when Russia invaded Ukraine...over 18 minutes Pritchard’s fierce sense of the colour of individual notes offered plenty of other points of interest. Pike’s lark tumbled down into darker textures before soaring back into balm and calm.

Geoff Brown, The Times ****

The Polish Violin; Volume Two

Chandos Records

Volume two of Pike’s Polish odyssey hits the mark with magical playing...Jennifer Pike and Petr Limonov really come into their own, discovering a magical interpretive path that indulges [Szymanowski's] luxuriant tendency with exquisite subtlety and musical focus. This becomes still more revelatory in the three Paganini caprice realisations, in which Pike refocuses her glistening virtuosity to create a dream world of haunting reminiscences. So musically entwined are Pike’s and Limonov’s fine-tuned responses to La Berceuse d’Aïtacho Enia, that one wishes this trance-like miniature would go on unfurling indefinitely.

The real discovery, however, is the D minor Sonata by Wieniawski’s daughter Poldowski (pseudonym of Irène Régine Wieniawska, later Lady Irène Dean Paul), whose delicious Tango (also included here) was famously recorded by Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Bay. Composed only a few years after Szymanowski’s Sonata, ‘Poldowski’ demonstrates at this stage an even surer absorption of late Romantic creative tendencies. In between comes a dazzlingly playful performance of Bacewicz’s solo violin Kaprys polski from Pike, who nonchalantly negotiates its pyrotechnical hurdles

Julian Haylock, The Strad

As in her first volume, Jennifer Pike (herself half-Polish) has chosen to anchor her survey to a substantial helping of Szymanowski, and she and pianist Petr Limonov open with a sweeping performance of the early Violin Sonata. It’s a conventional work in many ways, but a compelling one…[she gives] a sweeping performance of [Szymanowski’s] early Violin Sonata [...and] the haunting Berceuse d’Aïtacho Ania inspires a subtle palette of colours from Pike

John Allison, BBC Music Magazine - performance **** recording ****

Pike brings real late-Romantic sweep and panache to all works, as well as to Grażyna Bacewicz’s little solo Caprice, and a tango by Poldowski that closes the disc

Andrew Clements, The Guardian

Full of the personality, sensuality and security that characterised the earlier disc... Pike's tone is a rich caramel, with a good hit of salt to bring out the full effect of the complex flavours of Szymanowski's remarkably confident student sonata...This follow-up is just as ravishing as its predecessor

David Threasher, Gramophone

Pike again infuses her intense relationship with the music into her violin playing, so that all the works show a lot of energy. She maintains a balance between fleshing out the lines of musical development and passages that also require virtuosic mastery. The latter are found especially in the caprices, of which there are a greater number in Polish violin music

Uwe Krsuch, Pizzicato.lu ****

Digital recital with Petr Limonov

Polyphonic Concert Club / March 2021

Jennifer Pike is a captivating performer, whose thoughtful repertoire choices and breadth of musical interest are matched by impeccable technique. Here, reunited with Petr Limonov, her duo partner from 2019’s The Polish Violin, she was in her element in the shimmering, elusive sound-world of Szymanowski. His eerily beautiful Lullaby is less a song than the ghostly memory of one. Pike emphasised its ambiguity in the soft, velvety rasp of the low opening, supported by Limonov’s hypnotic piano, before releasing us into an otherworldly fantasy of fluttering harmonics... It’s as a collaborator that she’s really in her element, as heard here in the sunny interplay between violin and piano of Mozart’s Violin Sonata in G major. A programmed encore of Massenet’s “Meditation” from Thais was an exercise in restraint – a musical bonbon to send us home happy, but never oversugared.

Alexandra Coghlan, i Magazine

a nicely balanced programme of some of the most beautiful music written for violin... the Mozart [Violin Sonata in G] was superbly judged; Petr Limonov’s transparency, light sound and beautifully sparing use of the sustaining pedal formed the perfect partnership to Jennifer Pike’s beautifully eloquent violin...

[In Szymanowski's Violin Sonata] Pike and Limonov allow the music the perfect space to breathe. The central Andantino tranquilo e dolce is a dream, and was in this performance, the tranquil and sweet indicators fully realised. It is perhaps the most appealing movement, with its lovely alternations between pizzicato and arco (bowed) on the violin, its aching melodies for both violin and piano (some superbly even ascents here from Pike). By far the most muscular and gestural movement, the finale (an Allegro molto, quasi presto) still oozes clouds of perfume whilst maintaining a new-found level of excitement that later verges on frenzy in this sterling performance...

[In the Paganini/Szymanowski Caprice] Pike’s incisiveness is something else, that lovely sense of live performance coupled with the encountering of huge technical challenges creating a magnificent alternation between virtuosity and plateaux of calm. Pike’s highest register sings so sweetly...

The famous Méditation from Massenet’s Thaïs played absolutely to Pike’s strengths, a programmed encore of exquisite expression, the long lines delivered by Pike’s ‘endless bow’. A superb way to launch this captivating, beautifully produced series.

Colin Clarke, Seen and Heard International

Pike and Limonov began with Mozart's Violin Sonata in G major K301 [and gave a] full blooded yet elegant performance, with Pike displaying a lovely sense of line but there were some finely perky rhythms too, ending in a delightful Allegro...Pike produced some lovely singing tone in the slow movement [of Szymanowksi's Violin Sonata], and both performers collaborated throughout ending with a passionately vivid Allegro molto presto.

Planet Hugill

Elgar; The Lark Ascending

Chandos Records

Jennifer Pike’s individual reading of the first movement [Elgar’s Violin Sonata] is of well-defined character elements: drama for the first subject … and a spellbinding tranquility for the main secondary idea… The exotic Romance is delicate and refined … Pike seems very much at home in the modal world of Vaughan Williams’s late Violin Sonata in A minor (1954), and she and Martin Roscoe negotiate the imaginative Fantasia structure of the first movement with verve and vigour. The intonation of the multiple-stopping is well-nigh flawless and the execution of the long melodic passages is carefully balanced and nuanced.

Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone Magazine *****

This is a very interesting look at Vaughan Williams in a guise we haven't heard him before

BBC Radio 3 In Tune

Pike and Roscoe's detailed characterisations of [Vaughan Williams's sonata]'s themes ensures it coheres into a substantial and very personal drama...Pike, launching into this work with sturdy tone, shows a remarkable range of colour, whether in her impassioned yet true-sounding double stopping, or using grit and cutting tone one moment before switching to a beguiling, tender lyricism.

Daniel Jaffé, BBC Music Magazine, performance ***** recording ****

This latest recording is very fine and enlightening on its own terms

Jonathan Woolf, Music Web International *****

Rare and well-known repertoire with a twist combine in an irresistible release...Pike and Roscoe perform [Elgar's Violin Sonata] with vigour and entrancing sensitivity. They launch into the first movement with red-blooded energy, following which Pike’s tender, small voice is the more affecting. In the central Romance she moves from light caprice to deep reverie; the grand rhetoric and limpid subtleties of the finale complete a tremendous performance. Pike and Roscoe give a persuasive demonstration of why Vaughan Williams’s A minor Sonata, a stark and beautiful work, deserves more attention...The Lark Ascending which follows, given a gentle, rippling performance.

Tim Homfray, The Strad

[In Vaughan Williams’ Violin Sonata] both musicians throw themselves into the second movement’s Allegro Furioso with beautifully controlled abandon... Pike’s lark soars with confident ardour. A benchmark recording of the two sonatas is that from 1978 by Yehudi and Hephzibah Menuhin. Yehudi had a strong affinity for this music and is highly expressive, but his intonation is neither as secure nor his tone as pure as Pike’s, while Roscoe is the more imaginative pianist. This new recording is a must if you don’t know these great pieces.

Phillip Scott, Limelight Magazine *****

The strong forward motion of Pike's playing is ideal in bringing out Vaughan Williams' line of thought...It's a fresh recital of British chamber music, beautifully recorded by Chandos at Potton Hall, and it demands attention for this rising violinist

James Manheim, All Music

Elgar Violin Concerto

Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie (February 2020)

The soloist in Elgar’s work is entrusted to the British violinist Jennifer Pike. The woman in the flaming red dress is as virtuoso as she is sensitive to the considerable challenges of this “greatest violin concerto since Beethoven”, as the violinist Fritz Kreisler once said.

The interaction with Jennifer Pike works perfectly – the orchestra is both a dialogue partner and a subtle atmospheric painter. It forms sound spaces for the soloist, into which she can “sing” softly, tenderly, lyrically or in which she unfolds energetic self-confidence with insanely fast runs and double-stopping

Andreas Pecht, Rheinische Zeitung

Radio 3 lunchtime concert with Martin Roscoe

Wigmore Hall, Jan 2020

Pike and pianist Martin Roscoe had the full measure of Elgar’s restless mood-swings, and shaped both the dramatic contrasts of character and the more subtle fluctuations of tempo and phrasing with assurance. The incessant tug and pull of tension, climax and release were handled masterfully. A fine balance between the two instruments was sustained... Each variation [of Rozsa's Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song] was played with incredible care and nuance in order to capture its individual spirit: nostalgic or forthright, delicate or pugnacious. The unaccompanied violin statement of the theme was beautifully soulful, and then richly harmonised by Roscoe. It takes enormous skill and discipline not just to play Rózsa’s intricacies and fancies with such precision but also to make the music sound so spontaneous and free. Pike and Roscoe danced their way through the spiky pizzicato jauntiness, luxuriated in the melodising and breezed through the rhythmic fun. In the demanding double-stops Pike’s tone was unfailingly warm and she raced through the precipitous passages crisply.

Claire Seymour, Seen and Heard International

Like to the Lark

Chandos Records

The centrepiece of the recording is the arrangement by Paul Drayton of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending for violin and chamber choir... Jennifer Pike's gives a perceptive reading of the solo violin part in what is a surprisingly convincing and warm representation of the work.

Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone

The stand-out track in this anthology is Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, performed in an ingenious arrangement by Paul Drayton for violin and chamber choir…the lark’s ‘accompaniment’ becomes much more otherworldly, while the solo violin part – given a particularly rhapsodic spin by Pike – shines with a brighter aura

Geoff Brown, BBC Music Magazine, performance **** recording ****

*Disc of the week* 16th November

Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3

Fascinating and convincing choral approach to a violin concerto favourite.

The otherworldly effect created by integrating the violin (the most naturally ‘vocal’ of all instruments) with the magical, floated sonorities produced by the Swedish Chamber Choir under the highly gifted Simon Phipps is nothing short of entrancing. Indeed, hearing VW’s stunning invention hoisted gently and seamlessly aloft as if on warm summer breezes feels like a realisation of sounds and sensations at which the orchestral version seems poignantly to hint.

All of this could have been for nothing, were it not for the ravishing sounds produced by Pike at the peak of her powers, playing a glorious Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ loaned to her by Beare’s International Violin Society.

As she alternately weaves in and out of and flutters above the choral textures, it feels as though one were somehow miraculously listening to a lark in flight. No less unforgettable is her delectably golden-toned contribution to Ola Gjeilo’s luminous Serenity of 2010.

Julian Haylock, The Strad - *The Strad Recommends* January 2020

This performance makes one sit up and listen to the piece with renewed interest; the experience is helped by the quality of the singing and violin playing and the very effective transcription...The last work on the CD is Ola Gjeilo’s Serenity, his 2010 setting of the ancient text O magnum mysterium, for mixed chorus with violin. Like the RVW piece, the combination works beautifully, with the solo violin soaring above the intense choral sounds.

Jim Westhead, MusicWeb-International.com

The Lark Ascending

Britten-Shostakovich Festival Orchestra (September 2019)

It was Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending with Jennifer Pike as the eloquent soloist that left the most favourable impression – orchestra and violinist perfectly balanced in a magical rendering that combined impeccable technique with poetic sensitivity.

David Truslove, Classical Source

Soloist Jennifer Pike was magical in the Vaughan Williams, creating a sense of wonder, her playing as light as air, her trills beautifully controlled – and as she soared upwards into the infinite at the end her tone was so pure and ethereal that you could sense the audience holding their breath.

William Ruff, Reviews Gate

We were then treated to Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and privileged to hear Jennifer Pike handle the violin solo…a rounded, secure rendition that let the glorious music speak for itself, the sign of real artistry.

Charles Stokes, Edinburgh 49

The English violinist Jennifer Pike is a regular visitor to Scotland and has already developed a striking career on the world stage. Her articulation and mastery intoning the graceful harmonies of Vaughan Williams’s delightful arrangements of folk tunes in The Lark Ascending was profoundly impressive and was well accompanied by the British conductor.

Gregor Tassie, Seen and Heard International

Recital with Mahan Esfahani

Hong Kong City Hall, May 2019

Pike…played with fine lyricism and poise in the Adagio espressivo, while she and Esfahani enjoyed the witty and jovial outer Allegro leggiero and Allegro vivo movements.

Cascades by British composer Jeremy Pike, which draws inspiration from a walk along a stream, was written for Pike – his daughter – and Esfahani. The pair set the scene vividly, their playing bouncing off the other’s to great effect, Pike bathing in warm melodies and impressing with clean harmonics and seemingly at one with Esfahani’s harpsichord.

The dreamy Siciliano opening of Bach’s C minor sonata made for a lovely encore

Christopher Halls, South China Morning Post