Debut

“Making my first album gave me a chance to think again about the sounds I love and the kind of music I want to make in the future,” Himari tells Apple Music Classical. The Japanese violinist, born in 2011, speaks with the authority of someone four times her age, thanks to the musical maturity she has gained since playing her first notes as a three-year-old. The album Debut is much more than a record of teenage talent, such is the depth of Himari’s artistry and her readiness to take risks in the hunt for heartfelt emotions. “I’m especially drawn to playing in which the violin seems to sing like a human voice,” she notes. “I love experimenting with how one note connects to another, where to use portamento [to slide between notes], and how much portamento is needed to make a phrase sing naturally without becoming too much.” Himari’s debut album opens with a live recording of Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The Polish violinist composer wrote the piece in 1852 when he was 17 and gave its first performance with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester the following year. Its opening movement, littered with tricky double stops, vertiginous leaps and fiendishly fast fingerwork, ranks among the most difficult in the repertoire. Beyond technical wizardry and pyrotechnics, the concerto also contains enchanting melodies of a kind that Chopin might have composed. “Wieniawski’s music brings together so many of the things I love about the violin,” says Himari. “There’s brilliant virtuosity, of course, but there are also beautiful singing melodies and moments that can feel almost operatic. I think the violin can express something very close to the human voice. When I play this concerto, I try not to focus only on the virtuosity; I’m always looking for the ‘voice’ behind the notes.” Himari was 11 when she began studying the work with Ida Kavafian, her teacher at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, and chose to perform it three years later with the Berlin Philharmonic. H