SSO & Lisa Batiashvili (violin)

Performed 22-25 February 2012, Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

The Sydney Symphony seems to have bagged a trove of excellent violinists to start off their 2012 season. Isabella Faust last week gave us the Stravinsky concert, and the paragon Anna-Sophie Mutter will present her inimitable rendition of the Beethoven at month’s end. 

But first we were gifted Lisa Batiashvili, performing the Brahms Violin Concert. The violinist’s repertoire holds few greater challenges. Brahms’ unwillingness to compromise his music for the sake of facility was tempered by the famous violinist Joachim’s advice. The result is one of the most technically demanding, yet violinistic, concertos. Batiashvili’s rendering of this much-loved and oft-performed work was masterful. The technique was flawless; not one note was out of place. When necessary her projection soared over the full orchestra, the strength and dominance of her tone belying her skills as a chamber musician. Moments of inspired musicality gave the performance a personal touch hard to find in such a standard of the canon. From the opening movement (and formidable cadenza) to the bravura finale, Batiashvili held her audience spellbound. 

It was a concert of Titans: either side of the mighty concerto stood Beethoven’s Coriolan overture and the tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra of Strauss. The orchestra was in fine form for both, under the baton of Chief Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy. The famous opening of the Coriolan was controlled yet dramatic, stringent sustained notes juxtaposed with crisp chords. Though the tempo was slightly laboured, the orchestra conveyed the sense of foreboding originally intended for this overture, answered on its premiere by the Fourth Symphony and Fourth Piano concerto, and here by the equally triumphant Brahms.

This article was originally published in Conversation Issue 1, of 30 April 2012, published by the Conservatorium Students' Association. The print edition can be found on Issuu; it has been digitised by Alexander Poirier.