Batiashvili - Sibelius and Lindberg Violin Concertos (Repost)

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Batiashvili - Sibelius and Lindberg Violin Concertos (Repost)

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... this 27-minute [Lindberg's] concerto seems to me not just his most approachable score, but also the most important work in the form since the concerto of John Adams. Don't get me wrong. This is challenging, complex music in an unashamedly modernist idiom, a bustling, shape-shifting work full of startling surprises. But it has many treasures for those who like a little adventure in their listening. For all the density of the textures, there are more than occasional echoes of Sibelius: a darkly brooding theme that recurs, a resonant brass climax that sounds as if it could have come from the elder composer's Fifth Symphony. Also like Sibelius, Lindberg makes incredible demands on the soloist, including a lengthy cadenza in the last movement. But here too, Batiashvili's self-effacing virtuosity is equal to every challenge, and unfailingly expressive throughout. -- www.enjoythemusic.com

The Lindberg is a truly fantastic work radiant with perfumed fairytale romance and of dizzying complexity. The style is caught somewhere between Sibelius – which the composer acknowledges is a presence - and the first concertos of Szymanowski and Prokofiev. This is rapturous writing, translucently orchestrated and intensely poetic. The music is not at all dissonant and the lavish flow of ideas is transparent – a play of colour, texture, melody and rhythm. In that sense it also recalls a work unjustly forgotten since its first airing in the late 1950s, the Violin Concerto by American composer Benjamin Lees recently recorded by Elmar Oliveira for Artek (soon to be reviewed) and before that by Ricci for Vox. My only reservation relates to the way the work ends. Of course it does end but I did not feel that the way it ended had the inescapable logic I would expect from a finale. -- MusicWeb International