Nineteen-year-old violin virtuoso Caroline Goulding joins Maestro Kevin Rhodes and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra on Saturday evening as soloist in Felix Mendelssohn’s beloved Violin Concerto in E minor. Rhodes first encountered Goulding when the executive director of the Traverse, Michigan, Symphony, which he also conducts, heard the young artist perform at the Interlochen Arts Academy and recommended her as...
Caroline Goulding
Nineteen-year-old violin virtuoso Caroline Goulding joins Maestro Kevin Rhodes and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra on Saturday evening as soloist in Felix Mendelssohn’s beloved Violin Concerto in E minor.
Rhodes first encountered Goulding when the executive director of the Traverse, Michigan, Symphony, which he also conducts, heard the young artist perform at the Interlochen Arts Academy and recommended her as a soloist for the Traverse season.
Goulding played the Mendelssohn there last May, and Rhodes recalled, “I felt such solidity in her presentation – such groundedness – that of a high level artist. Her playing is quite unique.”
Goulding has already soloed with some of the finest orchestras in the United States, among them the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony, the Dallas, Houston, and Detroit Symphonies, the Louisville Orchestra and the Orchestra of St. Lukes. She has appeared as a recitalist and chamber musician Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and has shared the with Bela Fleck, Anton Nel, Christopher O’Riley, Navah Perlman, and others.
On March 14, 2011, Goulding was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant at a reception and performances at Lincoln Center’s Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse. Prior to receiving that honor, she won the 2009 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and a Grammy nomination for her debut recording on the Telarc label, which made Billboard Classical’s Top 15, and garnering admiring reviews from master musicians including violinist Jaime Laredo and composer John Corigliano.
Laredo called her “one of the most gifted and musically interesting violinists I have heard in a long time.” Corigliano, whose “Red Violin Caprices” Goulding included on her Telarc disc, said “I had no idea she was 16 when I heard the recording ... and wondered why I had never heard of this very special performer ... I think she will shortly become a very famous young woman, and only hope she gives my other violin works a glance.”
Goulding has appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, PBS “From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall,” and NPR’s “Performance Today,” and she was named Musical America’s Artist of the Month in December 2009.
She studies with Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory, and has participated in the Marlboro Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival, where she won the Aspen Concerto Competition at age 13.
A past recipient of the Stradivari Society, Goulding currently plays the General Kyd Stradivarius (circa 1720), courtesy of Jonathan Moulds.
She is equally at home in the exquisite transparency of Mozart or the fiery scrub of Tchaikovsky, and has won accolades from critics and fellow musicians as an artist of extraordinary ability and insight.
While she has excelled as a violinist from a very early age, Goulding stated in one interview that “It was always something that I did for fun, always a hobby, there was no pressure to live up to a certain dream or a certain futuristic goal. It was a healthy upbringing, and it let me grow as a musician naturally. My entire family has been supporting me every step of the way, but without push. It’s a very fine line between support and pressure, and they’ve done a wonderful job with keeping it healthy.”
Like Goulding, Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy, making his piano debut at age 9, and composing his First Symphony at age 15, his String Octet at age 16 and his Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at age 17. His symphonies, concertos, and oratorios are still staples of the classical repertoire, and the Violin Concerto Goulding will perform, written in 1844 (when Mendelssohn was positively elderly, at 35!) for Ferdinand David, is one of the most often performed of its genre.
As a companion piece to the Mendelssohn Concerto, Rhodes has chosen Mozart’s 41st and final Symphony. While its nickname “Jupiter” was not bestowed by the composer (it’s unclear who was ultimately responsible for the appellation, but it has stuck for nearly two-and-a-half centuries), it give a clear sense of the work’s expanse, skillful construction, and overall grandeur and glory of effect.
Both late works by prodigious talents, the concerto and symphony promise a thrilling evening of classic music for Springfield Symphony concertgoers.
In place of Classical Conversations on Saturday evening, the Springfield Youth Orchestra under the direction of Jonathan Lam will give a 20-minute performance.