User:Kenirwin/Chuns

Angela and Jennifer Chun
"In 2009, Angela and Jennifer premiered a work written for them, a two-violin concerto by George Tsontakis titled Unforgettable (based on the Nat King Cole song) at the Aspen Music Festival. In the coming seasons they will premiere a piece being written for them by Osvaldo Golijov." (op.cit. BWW )

"Since 2007, Angela and Jennifer have been String Mentors at London's Royal Academy of Music."

NYT (1987): "might well be commendable players separately, together they had little luck in blending their sounds one to another and even less in deciding on a common intonation."

NYT mixed review (2011): "Their Chuns’ astringent style was effective in the Bartok, but less so in Shostakovich’s rhapsodic “Three Duets for Two Violins and Piano.” They seemed intent on adding rawness and edge to these ingratiating pieces, but here it was too much. They were more convincing in Isang Yun’s Sonatina for Two Violins (1983), its suspended harmonics slowly building in waves of sound, and Martinu’s playful, elegant Sonatina for Two Violins and Piano (1930)."


 * Same performance, different review: "Bartók wrote his 44 Violin Duos with a pedagogical bent; mined from Romanian folk tunes, they are short (only a few longer than 2 minutes) and designed for amateur players or those just beginning their instrumental studies. That said, when attention is lavished on them by talents such as the Chun’s, they assume an entirely different personality. The Chun’s have lived with the Bartók pieces for awhile – their recent Harmonia Mundi recording was a hit – and the authority and care of preparation registered easily in the clear Tenri acoustic."

Bartok 44:


 * Haylock: "Angela and Jennifer Chun take a traditional viewpoint, imbuing the music with an espressivo warmth and sensitivity that is consistently beguiling, enhanced by a gently cushioned yet detailed sound picture."
 * Magil: "This set by the Chun sisters is technically fine but lacks the Hungarians’ wonderful atmosphere. Reviewing my listening notes, I see that the adjective that appears most often is “stiff”."

Glass/Muhly:


 * Homfray: "Much of the music is slow, with the violin sound rendered lush by close, resonant recording and generous vibrato.... The two violinists weave the rippling arpeggios, drones and extended melodic lines of Glass’s Mad Rush into something rich and magisterial, with clear textures and rich, focused sound. Glass wrote his incidental music for Jane Bowles’s play In the Summer House in 1993. The booklet notes tell us nothing of it, but the Chuns’ playing has a theatricality of its own, vivid and emotionally gripping."
 * Ap Sion: "As in the less familiar incidental music supplied by Glass for a production of Jane Bowles’s play In the Summer House (1993), the Chun duo’s sensitive and delicate playing imparts at times ethereal and transcendental qualities to the music which, one suspects, in the case of Mad Rush, is more in keeping with the spirit of the Dalai Lama, for whom it was written."