"...In between came Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, with the stirring young Stefan Jackiw as soloist. Mr. Jackiw, in a program note, charmingly tells of having discovered this concerto in 1999, through the film “Analyze This,” starring Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal.
“The most beautiful violin melody soars in the soundtrack” for a wedding scene, Mr. Jackiw writes, but “the ceremony is interrupted by a body falling from an overlooking balcony — an inconveniently timed mob hit.” Still, he was “transfixed by the music.”
Whatever it takes. Mr. Jackiw has in any case made the work his own: not only the beautiful melodies but also the skittish passages in which the tunes seem to be morphing and turning themselves inside out. He rendered them all with seeming ease and remarkable purity of tone, qualities he carried into his encore, the Largo from Bach’s Unaccompanied Violin Sonata in C, which he shaped beautifully."
