Violinist Bell, wife Martinez to bring romance of 'Voice and the Violin' concert to Akron

Violin superstar Joshua Bell and his new wife, soprano Larisa Martinez, will make music together in the intimate concert "Voice and the Violin" on Tuesday, Feb. 8, in Akron, just in time for Valentine's week.

It's a special concert that the musical power couple began creating at home together in Mount Kisco, New York, during the COVID-19 lockdown. They took their time finding music for voice and violin they really liked and wanted to perform together.

Now, they're on their first concert tour together as a married couple, with Akron's Tuesday Musical performance being one of their first stops.

"Making music with a loved one, it's the greatest way to spend time. It's a significant bond to share and it is really a gift for us," said Puerto Rican-born Martinez, 34, speaking by phone from home Jan. 25.

"This is a great program, because it's a lot of romantic music," the soprano said of the concert with her husband, which will include everything from Italian opera to intimate art songs to music depicting star-crossed lovers in "West Side Story Suite."

The couple performed a different version of "Voice and the Violin" at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in August. As their duo program continues to evolve, their concert in Akron will be unique.

At E.J. Thomas Hall, they'll be performing "Voice and the Violin" with piano only for the first time, which promises to make the concert even more intimate. Accompanying them on the program, which they finalized just weeks ago, will be pianist Peter Dugan, who also performs with Bell, 54, on his solo tour.

"We've never done it the way we're doing it there" in Akron, said Martinez, who will be performing in Akron for the first time. "We get to do repertoire like lieder, for example, in my case, a kind of art song that's more intimate that wouldn't work with the orchestra but was made for the piano and this kind of concert."

She referred to two art songs unique to the Akron program: Schubert's "An die Musik," which is a hymn to the art of music; and Puerto Rican composer Narciso Figueroa's "Mi Rancho."

"I don't get to do this repertoire a lot, and I just love it. It's very close to my heart. To me it's like the most profound of all classical music," the soprano said.

Bell, speaking by phone from New York Jan. 26 after returning from his first tour to Saudi Arabia the day before, said he also was looking forward to performing an eclectic evening of chamber music with his wife.

"That sort of music was really written to really be played in the home" for a house soiree among friends, he said. "Chamber music is really meant to be that intimate experience."

He said he loves the lieder repertoire that Martinez will be singing: "It's poetry and music in the best sense."

Bell, who counts Schubert among his favorite composers and finds him the most touching of all, is also looking forward to performing the instrumental Schubert Sonatina No. 1 in D major with Dugan in Akron.

Martinez and Bell also are excited to share a piece they discovered by Louis-Ferdinand Herold, which is virtuosic for both voice and violin, as well as Rachmaninoff's "O, Cease They Singing, Maiden Fair" in an arrangement by Fritz Kreizler for violin and voice.

"It's just a beautiful version that you don't get to hear much and it can only happen with piano," Martinez said of the Rachmaninoff piece.

Bell, who hasn't played this version of the dark, beautiful piece since he was 16, said the work will be new for him and his wife: "We haven't done it anywhere."

So what's it like performing on tour together as husband and wife?

"It's wonderful. It's just an excuse to be able to be together," Martinez responded.

"Many people have commented that they find it romantic to see two people who obviously love each other also making music together, and it's something very nice," Bell concurred.

He's naturally interested in the correlation between the human voice and the violin's voice, having done an album 20 years ago called "Voice of the Violin" in which he transcribed operatic arias for the violin.

When Bell and Martinez married in October, 2019, it was such a busy time, they didn't take a honeymoon. She had just made her recital debut at the Kennedy Center before the wedding and then made her Carnegie Hall debut with the Athens Philharmonic four days later.

The pandemic gave the couple the gift of time at home together, something they didn't have much of before with his busy performance schedule and her growing career, which has included touring with famed tenor Andrea Bocelli. During lockdown, they had time to prepare and practice together.

"It was a silver lining in the pandemic that we actually got like a very long honeymoon for us," she said. "And now, we want to make it a point to not be apart for so long."

Even rehearsal time together is romantic, Martinez said, as they speak the same language of music.

"Every day's a Valentine's Day for us," she said.

"He's such a wonderful partner to work [with] musically. It's fun to go through the music with him and figuring things out."

"I think there's a lot of mutual admiration going on."

The Grammy Award-winning Bell, one of the most famous classical musicians in the world, has had a career spanning nearly four decades. He has been music director of the British chamber orchestra the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields since 2011.

Bell has appeared numerous times in Akron — in solo recital, with the Akron Symphony Orchestra and with the Academy. His upcoming concert with Martinez will be his fifth Akron appearance since 2011.

Their concert will end with the ultra-romantic "West Side Story Suite," specially arranged for them by friend Charles Czarnecki, incorporating an earlier arrangement for violin and orchestra that Bell worked on years ago with the late Broadway composer Bill Brohn.

"It's obviously very romantic as well," Bell said of the suite, which includes the greatest hits from Leonard Bernstein's musical score.

Bell and Martinez met Dec. 30, 2011, backstage at New York's Blue Note jazz club after a performance by their mutual friend, trumpeter Chris Botti. Their relationship was long distance for some months before Martinez moved from Puerto Rico to New York to study for a master's degree in voice performance from Mannes the New School of Music. Bell proposed to Martinez on their seventh anniversary in Botti's dressing room at the Blue Note, and they were married less than a year later.

The violinist, famously known for putting his whole body into making his rare 1713 Stradivarius sing, has said his wife sings like an angel. And there are many similarities between the human voice and the violin's voice, he said.

"I've always listened to singers and tried to treat the violin as a voice," Bell said. "The way I think about music, I think, 'How would I sing it?' " Bell said. "Every single thing about the violin seems to have a physical equivalent in the human body in the voice."

After being married for just over two years, Martinez said it still feels like she and Bell are newlyweds.

"Oh yes, he's still my boyfriend," said the singer, who said she loves his "playful brain," puns and sense of humor.

"We do share our sense of humor quite a lot. Laughing is the best recipe for romance, you know?"

Arts writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.

Details

Concert: "Voice and the Violin" with Larisa Martinez and Joshua Bell

Where: Tuesday Musical, E.J. Thomas Hal, 198 Hill St., University of Akron

When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 8

Cost: Tickets start at $25; student admission free

Information: tuesdaymusical.org or 330-761-3460

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Husband-wife Joshua Bell, Larisa Martinez bring romance of music to Akron