Concert Review of a Robert McDuffie Performance

[Satzaroo]

I vigorously applaud last night's concert at Centenary Church given by Robert McDuffie, a protégé of Isaac Stern and Leonard Bernstein, who performed a Beethoven sonata, some Kreisler pieces (arranged and original), and selections from "Porgy and Bess" and from Copland's "Rodeo."
McDuffie is technically superb. Every note that he played was precisely articulated, from meticulous pizzicati to intricate double stops, from cascading arpeggios to fiery trills. Smoothly and authoritatively, he made the transition between contrasting tempos, dynamics, tones, and intonations.

But what impressed me the most about Robert McDuffie was not his technical mastery of the violin but his emotional involvement. During the Beethoven Sonata in c minor, McDuffie was filled with joy, serenity, melancholy, and anguish. For example, in the lyrical second movement, a trance-like, almost beatific smile overwhelmed him. At other times, especially in the first and fourth movements, McDuffie scowled majestically, his forehead creased and lips tight together, as if caught up in an agonizing conflict of forces that he must subdue in order to survive. In the Mozart-Kreisler "Rondo," McDuffie looked appropriately ferocious as he lashed through the many turbulent sections but became meditative in the cadenza. McDuffie was just as expressive in the lighter numbers at the end of the program. He wrung out all the semi-sweetness in the Gershwin-Heifetz "It Ain't Necessarily So" and madly frolicked through Copland's "Hoedown."
Next month, McDuffie performs for the first time at Lincoln Center. Play, on McDuffie.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

All I know of McDuffie is his Adams and Glass VCs disc with Eschenbach/Houston. A good disc. He seems to be a player who flies under the radar of public awareness, so to speak.