Saturday 5 February 2011

Since its arrival in 1955, the first Shostakovich violin concerto has established itself as the most often played in concert and most often recorded violin concerto of the last 50 years; if one excludes the Sibelius concerto, it may even be the most played and recorded of the last 100 years. It seems to me that every version that comes along I herald yet again as “the best”. I have 40 recordings of the work; and no less than 10 have my rare “AAA” rating. A strange state of affairs.

Well, it was nine AAAs; but the latest recording to thunder through my letter box – Lisa Batiashvili with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen on DG – makes it ten, and Batiashvili joins Julia Fischer, Leila Josefowicz, Sergei Khachatryan, Alexei Michlin (for the violin playing), Stoika Milanova, Vadim Repin (several versions) and Maxim Vengerov at the crowded top of the tree.

I have been a loyal Batiashvili fan for the past ten or eleven years. Her sound and playing are highly distinctive (a rare thing with modern violinists). Difficult to describe, but there has always been a nobility about her playing, with an extremely well executed vibrato, a way of concentrating on every note and every phrase, and a contralto sound that often alternates between clarinet and oboe. Her actual sound often reminds me of Gioconda de Vito. Her performance here of the Shostakovich first concerto deserves classic status, helped greatly by a first-rate recording, good recording balance and first-class partnership with the orchestra and conductor. The noble violin rides above the storm.

The CD has some attractive and out-of-the way fill-ups, and the two pieces for violin and piano with Hélène Grimaud remind us how much better things are when duos are played with real pianists, and not with Emanuel Bay look-alikes.

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