Violin soloist returns with fervor after fever

ESSEN, Germany - It wasn't the heat at the Grafenegg Festival or the stress or anything else: Janine Jansen, the Philadelphia Orchestra's missing-in-action star violin soloist, simply had the flu. After missing two dates on the European festivals tour, she returned in high style to play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto Wednesday at the Essen Philharmonie and will appear at the all-important London Proms on Thursday.

Both critics and orchestra members missed her on the earlier dates. "And I missed them," she said the other day from her home in Amsterdam. "I felt so horrible. We had a nice start in Grafenegg [on Aug. 26], and then the day after, it was finished for me. I had a week in bed with fever. I thought I might take painkillers and everything would be OK. But no way."

Maybe the start was "nice" from an artistic standpoint, but Jansen rehearsed with the orchestra during the hottest hours of a 100-plus-degree day, and she worried about the health of her violin, a 1727 Stradivarius known as the "Barrere."

"It was crazy," she said. "The wood of my instrument . . . I'd put my hand to it and it was boiling! This cannot be good for the instrument. But the heat also isn't good for one's self. When I flew home after the evening concert, I thought, 'That's why I feel like this.' "

Of course it wasn't; Jansen would have been sick, heat or no heat, according to her doctor. But on her return Wednesday, she played with what seemed like pent-up energy and inspiration. Always a highly physical performer, she seems particularly seized by the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, the repertoire for Wednesday and for Thursday's London concert. She's a musical storyteller, one of the most vivid since cellist Jacqueline du Pre.

Never was there a sense of her observing the music from the outside. Any lines between the two disappeared amid the fine shading she delivered in the concerto's endless lyricism. Often she seemed to play as much to the musicians as to the audience, directing her energy toward incidental solos within the orchestra, which willingly accommodated her intense pianissimos and the seemingly spontaneous elasticity of her phrasing.

You'd swear that she was playing with a highly specific imagery in the back of her mind, though after the Essen performance, she denied that: "I'm not a visual person. But I have a lot of feeling!"

Having risen quickly to international circles some five years ago, the 33-year-old Jansen is still being discovered by audiences, who come to her performances with high expectations from her handful of superb recordings for the Decca label, usually made with the best conductors and orchestras in the business. She has a taste for big, neglected work, such as the Britten Violin Concerto, though one of her early calling cards was a recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons hailed for an originality far beyond most of the many, many others.

Jansen's performance has retained its early-career exuberance. But that very exuberance is one reason she called a six-month hiatus a year ago, on the verge of professional burnout with some 200 concerts a year. On top of that, she alludes to issues in her personal life, which has included a long-term relationship with violinist Julian Rachlin.

"That's been quite a tough year for me," she said of the time since she decided to pause. "I've learned a lot. It came to a point where I couldn't operate any more. In the past seven years I've pushed myself a lot - and never thought about it.

"Now, I'm looking at my schedule differently, trying to do less concerts and not playing in the U.S. one night and in Europe the next. That really destroys you in the end. But my love of music hasn't changed. I can't play with less involvement. So I must play fewer concerts. I feel so much stronger now, and I clearly know how I want things."

Such a crisis isn't unusual among violinists whose talent and careers develop early. The most famous was the prodigy Yehudi Menuhin, who as a young man came home from an exhausting tour playing for the troops in World War II and had to relearn, analytically, what he had done intuitively as a youngster.

More recently, Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov drove himself into the ground, and took time off - but reemerged with colorless, uninspired playing. At age 47, he is now retired from performing. Jansen's teacher, Philippe Hirschhorn, suffered a similar fate.

Jansen, however, has a number of high-profile plans for the future, including recording Schubert's String Quintet and Schoenberg's Transfigured Night with an all-star lineup, and the premiere of a new concerto by Penderecki.

No doubt that's a relief to those who want another 30 years of her playing. "I want that, too," she said.