Staying power

Sarah Chang continues a lifelong journey at Wharton

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To get into Sarah Chang, you have to get over Sarah Chang.It seems she has.

Chang, 29, can’t believe her 20th anniversarydisc is due next year.

“That’s kind of shocking, actually,” the violinist said whenreached by phone at a gig in Hong Kong.

At first, people marveled at her, as if she came to Earthfrom Alpha Centauri’s accelerated conservatory of music.

Since then, amazement had turned into involvement. Theprodigy of prodigies has taken her listeners on a passionate, lifelongexploration of sound.

“There’s still a lot more I need to do and want to do on amusical level — people I want to play with, places I want to go,” she said.

Chang is the soloist Thursday, Oct. 7, when the DetroitSymphony visits the Wharton Center to play two big works, Max Bruch’s ViolinConcerto and the “Symphonie Fantastique” by Hector Berlioz.

One of Chang’s most frequent collaborators, DSO musicdirector Leonard Slatkin, will conduct.

Chang has a long history with the sprawling Bruch concerto.

“I learned it very, very young,” she said. “I was...”

The long-distance connection crackled. Did she say 16 orsix? Need you ask?

She put the concerto away for 10 years, until she had theweathered perspective of a 16-year-old. “I gave it a huge break, and when Itook it up again, I completely re-learned it,” she said.

“I love that fact that it’s so unapologetically romantic.The melodic lines and harmonies go straight to the heart.”

Born in Philadelphia to Korean parents, Chang was workingwith the world’s greatest conductors and orchestras while in her teens.

The Bruch concerto was her audition piece for the JuilliardSchool at age 6. The technique was there, of course, but lots of insufferablekids can play gobs of violin, and who cares? Chang already had more thantechnique — a luminous tone like the purple edge of a cloud bank at sunset.

Chang must be the only 29-year-old classical musician with aseparate Web page dubbed “The Early Years.” Her debut album topped theclassical charts in 1991, but there were skeptics.

In his 1996 book “Who Killed Classical Music?” NormanLebrecht lumped Chang with other violin prodigies who “had no grippingindividuality to convey in music and all sounded much the same.”

But she kept going, weaving that purple tone into darker anddeeper tapestries, drawing the audience closer along the way.

A recent New York Times review called her “one of the mostconsistently satisfying violinists still active” and a “vital, rewardingartist.”

Last week, Chang and “Lenny” (as she calls Slatkin)performed one of the most searing 20th-century works for violin andorchestra, Shostakovich’s first concerto.

“She tackled the concerto head on, with ferociousdetermination,” wrote a Los Angeles critic.

“It takes over everything you do,” Chang said of theconcerto. “You eat, sleep and breathe Shostakovich. It’s so monstrous, itleaves imprints in your head.”

It’s hard not to notice that 14 years after Lebrecht’s booksounded the death knell for classical music, Chang’s concerts still sell outall over the world.

“I’m seeing a fresh new wave of younger people coming to theconcerts, a lot of young students,” Chang said.

She said they’re looking for a rush only big symphonic musiccan deliver.

“There are times when I go to a concert and hear a piecelike Mahler’s First Symphony, and after the concert, you sit there and you’restunned,” she said. “It moves youto the extent where days after the concert, you still feel it in you. That’s anexperience no pop concert, with all due respect, can ever give.”

Chang has worked with every great maestro in the world, fromMehta, Maazel and Barenboim to Masur, Muti and Gergiev, but she seems to have aspecial rapport with Slatkin.

“He really makes you feel like a colleague,” Chang said.“Even 10 years ago, when I was starting out, it was the same mutual respect.”

Slatkin sits high in the world’s pantheon of conductors, butdoesn’t fit the clich of the tempestuous maestro.

“He’s one of the most intelligent maestros I know of,” Changsaid. “He has this uncanny way of knowing what you want to do, sometimes beforeyou do it.”

With Slatkin, Chang said, even a monster work like theShostakovich came off without stress.

“He’s so calm,” Chang said. “He makes everything seem soeasy, so effortless. He also has a lot of great stories.”

With almost 20 years as a pro under her belt, Chang would beexcused an early burnout. On the contrary, it looks like she is digging in forthe long haul.

Her touring schedule is punishing as ever, with a big LondonSymphony Orchestra tour on the horizon.

Outside of music, she has time for little else but shopping,movies — the last one she saw was “Iron Man 2” — and sleep.

“A week’s vacation will be really, really nice,” she said.“Other than that I’m happy with what I’m doing. I’d like to take it up anothernotch, though.”

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