Leonidas Kavakos Part I

There are superb violinists who have rarely been labelled as “stars”. One thinks of Josef Szigeti, Josef Suk, Wolfgang Schneiderhan … and Leonidas Kavakos. I have been an admirer of Kavakos for over two decades now. Unlike some musicians, he keeps a relatively low profile and just gets on with superb violin playing. A CD from 2000 devoted to the music and arrangements by Fritz Kreisler reminds us that Kavakos studied for a time with Joseph Gingold; he obviously learned a lot about playing Kreisler from Gingold. Absence of vulgar bravura; excellent sense of rhythm; highly varied dynamics; highly varied bow strokes. Playing 18 short pieces one after another and holding a listener's attention, is a major challenge, but Kavakos brings it off with his Kreisler CD.

15 years later brings us another Kavakos CD, this time with 15 short pieces embracing a number of virtuoso challenges from Sarasate, Tarrega, Paganini and Wieniawski. The CD includes what appears from my off-air recordings of Kavakos concerts, to be one of his favourite encores: Tarrega's Recuerdos de la Albambra, transcribed by the maverick American violinist Ruggiero Ricci. Even after all these years, I cannot work out how one violin can possibly play the piece. The recital includes Benjamin Britten's curious Reveille, labelled as a concert study for violin and piano. The only other person I can find in my collection who has also recorded it is someone called Magdalena Filipczak; whoever she may be. Kavakos's renditions here of Tchaikovsky's Valse-Sentimanale and of Dvorak's over-familiar Humoresque (arranged by Kreisler) are among the very best to be had. As usual, I skipped Paganini's Variations on God Save the King, since I am not fond of Paganini in his circus mode. Kavakos reveals himself to be a top-class virtuoso throughout the 78 minutes of this CD devoted to virtuoso violin music. But he remains a violinist and musician who never crosses the line into being a showman or entertainer. Unlike some of his rivals.

Part II of this write-up on Leonidas Kavakos will follow once I have digested his new recording of the six solo sonatas and partitas by Bach that arrived today. Rare these days that I add to my over-large collection of CDs with a new one; but I made an exception for Kavakos. The 21^st century has featured many really top-class violinists, and Kavakos, along with Lisa Batisahvili and Alina Ibragimova, is at the top with a select few.