The tone suggests celtic - maybe because that's the direction in which the violin has tended to lean - but Kennedy can't tell you why and how and where the melodies come from. Believe it or not, he doesn't have a lot of time for musical fashions, whatever form they take.And he's putting his money where his mouth is with Kafka. It's going to come as a surprise to many that this new album is worlds removed from the acid-jazz-rave that we might, just might, have anticipated. Kafka's musical imperative is back-to-basics in the purest, truest sense - it's almost entirely about melody Sweet, touching melody. He'll tell you that his "politically incorrect" account of Vivaldi's Seasons (and you thought he didn't know) was in some respects a reaction against the fashion for "period authenticity". When he retreated to Malvern he lost himself in Bach, working day in, day out, to investigate that freedom - the kind of freedom that the likes of Pablo Casals spent lifetimes unlocking. The music was getting left behind".And the music was, is, what it has always been about.
When Kennedy programmes Jimi Hendrix alongside Bach and Bartok, it isn't out of some oikish desire to ingratiate himself with today's youth/pop culture (he's far happier when younger fans tell him that they didn't expect to like the Bach but did, or, vice versa, when classical enthusiasts respond to the Hendrix)."There are", he says, "intriguing musical parallels to be drawn between Bartok's adoption of folk, Hendrix's absorption of the blues, and Bach's 'universal freedom of spirit'". "Tory MPs were advancing their careers by saying that I was advocating children taking drugs ... any publicity was good publicity, the power of persuasion was all about power .. I was becoming a marketing formula I felt like I was losing control. There is nowhere to hide in that piece.For Kennedy it was something of a plateau. It was live, it was proud, it was the best, the very best, he could do without finding time to grow a little more. So it was as good a moment as any to get off the merry- go-round, take a deep breath, stand back from his own publicity. His persona is as much a part of him as the instincts which make him a great player ("Thanks, man, I'll send you a tenner in the post.")And he is a great player.
His extraordinary recording of the Elgar Concerto (one of Gramophone magazine's "Classical Records of the Decade") outreached even his mentor Yehudi Menuhin in presenting a total re-evaluation of the piece. In the Brahms Concerto, Kennedy spun heavenly lengths above and beyond tradition and expectation. The conductor, Klaus Tennstedt (himself a violinist), wholeheartedly adopted him (cadenza and all). And when he came to the Beethoven (again with Tennstedt) he took it completely to heart, made it entirely his own without ever having to beg our indulgence The Beethoven will always sift out the great from the good.