This is a most unusual, beautiful recording. Michelle Makarski, winner of numerous competitions including the Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition, is a splendid violinist with a distinctive personal style. Possessor of a masterful, unobtrusive technique and a lovely, remarkably pure yet variable tone, her playing is singularly noble, restrained, and inwardly expressive. Equally at home in pre-baroque and contemporary music, she constantly explores links between the present and the past and actively champions living composers. This recording characteristically pairs three sonatas by Tartini with two pieces by her friend Donald Crockett, one written for her and one for Ronald Copes, who plays viola here. The virtuosic Tartini sonatas are elegantly phrased, rhythmically incisive, and, though played in their original, unaccompanied version and almost without vibrato, impeccably in tune. Crockett’s “Mickey Finn” for solo violin, a fiendishly difficult piece, partly songful, partly rambunctious, and full of jumps, running passages, slashing chords and harmonics, is tossed off brilliantly. “To Be Sung on the Water” for violin and viola was inspired by the Schubert song of the same title. Played with mutes, it is all color and atmosphere, evoking the shimmering waves, the glowing sunset, and the gently rocking boat gliding serenely through the fleeting hours like the soul toward eternity. –Edith Eisler
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