A la cime des Cordes

Soprano Jennifer Lindshield (Carnegie Hall) and violinist Gilles Henry (Orchestre de Paris) present “À la cime des cordes, When a soprano meets a violin”. The great early italian violin makers, Stradivari and Guarneri, created violins that produce the most female-like tones. It is argued that this is part of the reason why they are considered so valuable. Gilles Henry plays on a 1785 Lorenzo Storioni: a violin made by a student of Stradivari. For centuries it has been thought that violins “sing” with a female soprano voice. Francesco Geminiani, the baroque violinist, advised students that “the art of playing consists in giving the instrument a tone that shall in a manner rival the most perfect human voice”. Today scientists are able to prove the remarkable acoustical similarities in that the violin can produce human-like formants, the harmonic tones that correspond to resonances in the vocal tract.* Jennifer and Gilles present duets with this beautiful acoustical match. Compositions by Darius Milhaud, Rebecca Clarke, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Heitor Villa-Lobos explore this voice and violin combination without piano. This unique repertoire from the 20th century ranges in styles from folk songs to polytonality and is performed in the French, English and Portuguese languages.