Tuesday 16 January 2007

I really thought my days of enjoying a performance of Beethoven's violin concerto were well and truly over; it has become just too familiar. But a performance by Igor Bezrodny (1963) had me listening to it twice. He plays too slowly in the opening movement, for my taste, and the work comes over as a high romantic composition from around 1850 rather than something from not much more than a decade after the death of Mozart. But Bezrodny (rather like Lisa Batiashvili) makes you accept his leisurely, lyrical view. The return of the main theme after the cadenza (played pianissimo) is exactly as I have always thought it should be. And what incredible, relaxed violin playing (a bit like Milstein). Goes into my top five Beethoven violin concertos.

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