Blake Pouliot

Blake Pouliot is a Canadian violinist who appears with North American orchestras as a concerto soloist. In this Little Rock program he performs the Brahms Violin Concerto, a large-scale work that pairs the violin against a full orchestra in a lecture-format concert alongside Mozart's Symphony No. 40.

Listeners coming to hear Pouliot in the Brahms Violin Concerto can expect a piece that opens with a long orchestral introduction before the violin enters with a soaring, songful line. The first movement is built on the tension between grand orchestral statements and passages where the soloist plays alone or with just a few instruments in dialogue. The second movement centers on a folk-like melody first given to the oboe, which the violin then takes up and decorates. The finale turns to a dance rhythm with a Hungarian flavor, full of rapid string crossings and double stops, technical demands the soloist must make sound effortless. Paired on the same program is Mozart's Symphony No. 40, one of only two symphonies he wrote in a minor key, marked by a restless, urgent opening theme that returns throughout the work.