Wednesday 18 May 2005

Difficult to imagine a better performance of Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending than that of Hilary Hahn, Colin Davis and the LSO (a fill-up to the Elgar violin concerto). Critics often claim that the Lark is for "violin within the orchestra" as opposed, say, to Chausson's Poème that is for violin and orchestra.
Well, Ms Hahn and Sir Colin (like Sarah Chang and Bernard Haitink before them) point up the parallels with Chausson's near-contemporaneous work. Played like this, with Hilary Hahn earning brownie points with nearly every phrase, Vaughan Williams' piece is fully Chausson's equal. A well-deserved three stars.

The evening began with Viktoria Mullova playing Bach's B minor partita for unaccompanied violin (the one I usually don't like too much) and Paganini's variations on Nel cor più non mi sento. Mullova, like Kavakos, is highly under-estimated. The Paganini is breathtaking instead of, as all too often with other players, nail-biting. And Julia Fischer should have listened to Mullova's BWV 1002 before embarking on her own long-winded rendition. Mullova is fleet of foot, and makes repeats when it makes sense to make repeats.

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