In some concert programmes, the interval can serve as a pause for breath between complementary pieces. On this evening it functioned more as a decisive boundary separating two very different halves. There was little on the surface to connect Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s transfixing performance of Schönberg’s Violin Concerto in the first part with Kirill Petrenko’s genial turn through Tchaikovsky’s much-loved Fifth Symphony in the second. Yet if the evening seemed more like two discrete half-concerts than a unified programme, the quality of the performances was sufficient to ensure that each half was satisfyingly memorable.
Schönberg’s Violin Concerto is no longer a rarity in the concert hall; the technical demands of the solo part have turned it into one of the central works which every up-and-coming violinist must confront. Yet there was…
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