The Georgian-German violinist Lisa Batiashvili has quietly reached the point of being one of the cognoscenti's players in mainstream repertory, with a free-spirited manner married to formidable technique in such a way as to bring to mind the greats of the past. Here she has warm-hearted support from an obviously energized Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle, with strong engineering from Deutsche Grammophon in the Funkhaus Natepastraße in Berlin. The result is a superior recording of some well-worn repertory ...
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The Georgian-German violinist Lisa Batiashvili has quietly reached the point of being one of the cognoscenti's players in mainstream repertory, with a free-spirited manner married to formidable technique in such a way as to bring to mind the greats of the past. Here she has warm-hearted support from an obviously energized Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle, with strong engineering from Deutsche Grammophon in the Funkhaus Natepastraße in Berlin. The result is a superior recording of some well-worn repertory concertos. This isn't a single artistic statement; the two concertos were recorded a year apart. But each one is grasped as a living, breathing entity. Get the technical prowess out of the way by sampling the blistering finale of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47, and turn then to the Tchaikovsky opening movement, where Batiashvili cultivates a restrained purity of expression that Jascha Heifetz would have loved. In the extremely dark, slow movement of the ostensibly less...
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