“Stella Chen’s bright, elegant timbre is luminous and heart-shaking”
Opening ASMF’s 2026/27 London season, violinist Stella Chen joined the orchestra for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 and Caroline Shaw’s _Punctum, with Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major in the second half. Chen recently recorded the Beethoven with ASMF, but the live performance felt intriguingly divergent. While the delicate, silky femininity showcased on the album did not fade, this Beethoven felt decisively symphonic and classical, and much less romantic.
The orchestra was exceptionally well locked in, while Chen never fought against its scale. Instead, her bright, elegant timbre remained delicately interwoven with the orchestra. Chen seemed remarkably restrained in imposing her personality upon Beethoven, while many young artists can appear anxious to do so. Nevertheless, it felt as if her method of letting Beethoven grow from within, and paradoxically in return, enabled us to hear her free expression. This reminded me of those older classical recordings from the last century, where expression is always heard through method, not through personality.
The orchestra shared that quality. Its brass sounded unexpectedly gentle, while the woodwind brought a merry, almost spring-like quality. By the Rondo, this created a pleasurable sense of wandering, where Beethoven’s recurring refrain continually returned and then set off somewhere else again. Chen’s highest register floated above the orchestra almost like a soprano’s light mixed voice, luminous while heart-shaking.
Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, inspired partly by Bach’s St Matthew Passion, was recurrently melancholic and sticky. Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 then restored movement and brightness, where the orchestra again sounded surprisingly symphonic and classical. The woodwind seemed to flicker in and out of the orchestral texture, sometimes merry, sometimes gently theatrical, continually answering the rest of the orchestra. The clarinets felt unusually prominent as Mozart omits oboes, heavenly against the much weightier bassoon.
Similar to the two pieces in the first half, The Finale is also built from a central motif by recurring and repeating, which gradually develops, tightens and intensifies through the playful call and response between strings and woodwind, producing an accumulating layered intensity. This offers an interesting counterpart to Beethoven’s momentum, where Chen’s violin constantly led the orchestra into seemingly similar, but ultimately varied scenes.