Violinist Josef Spacek, 30, who gets time off as concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic to play numerous solo engagements, is a sleek, modern player. His local debut Tuesday, as part of the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Chamber Music series, displayed impressive dexterity but a curiously impersonal sound. The program was oddly arranged, opening with the single greatest piece ever written for the violin, the Bach “Chaconne,” followed by second-tier music of Szymanowski, Ysaÿe, Prokofiev and Saint-Saëns. And the entire recital was in D except for his first encore (a truly silly set of “Yankee Doodle” variations by Vieuxtemps). Questionable musical judgment all around, but I tried to focus on the playing.
The Bach featured conspicuously precise intonation; I have never heard such accuracy in a live performance of the piece other than from Hilary Hahn; everything just rang, from all the overtones coming alive. Spacek’s bow arm, too, is splendid; perfect distribution seemed to happen naturally, chords never scratched and the spiccato in the finale of the Saint-Saëns Sonata No. 1 had real teeth. The dazzling fingerboard gymnastics in Ysaÿe’s “Saint-Saëns Caprice,” the Szymanowski “Mythes” and the Vieuxtemps encore were dispatched with the cleanest articulation and no sense of struggle.
In short, this artist has all the goods for a successful career but one; his concept of sound seems like an afterthought. The vibrato often starts late, note after note, which hampers the shaping of a phrase (and in the Bach there was hardly any vibrato at all). There is little sense of soprano and alto voices, and I never felt that Spacek was striving to convey any emotional message through the sound. Without this connection to listeners, an artist will not reach the higher tiers of the profession. Pianist Miroslav Sekera was an expert partner, offering a wide range of colors in the Szymanowski. But by the closing Saint-Saëns Sonata, he’d clearly grown tired of holding down his sound, and he often engulfed Spacek with thunderous playing.
