What sounds violinist Kavakos, adjacent to the unlikely (****) – Parool.nl

03-04-15 11:43 pm – Source: Het Parool

Violinist Leonidas Kavakos in 2014. © epa

Review

With a formidable playing Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Valeri Gergiev struck Leonidas Kavakos the music in his soul

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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Valeri Gergiev Our verdict: ★★★★ ☆
Leonidas Kavakos (violin)
Programs Shostakovich Violin Concerto; Wagner Excerpts from Parsifal, Götterdämmerung and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Heard: 2/4
Where: Concertgebouw
Repetition Tonight at De Doelen in Rotterdam
Broadcast 5/4 on Radio 4 (14.15)

Gergiev with his toothpick © Simon van Boxtel

If the miraculous Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos continues, he may have a year or release a double CD titled My Encores: the Sonatas and Partitas by Bach.

Also yesterday with the Concertgebouw Orchestra was at it again. After a searing performance of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto he played the Largo from Sonata no. 3, in which he pocketed take his last so long that it looked like he had a stick two feet in his right hand. Perhaps even more beautiful was that he then, by motionless and head down to stay in place are a breathless silence enforced that lasted eight seconds, but it felt like a serene eternity, where everything was good and pure. A heavy touching moment where we would like to give 77 stars for.

Stalin
77 is also the opus number of the violin concerto that Shostakovich completed in 1948, but that he put up after the death of Stalin in the drawer after he and other Soviet composers in ’48 of the Central Committee of the Communist Party had received a public scolding because they were too far on their artistic path strayed from the socialist doctrine of salvation.

Uplifting, people wanted to hear uplifting jokes Stalin and his ilk, not the music that even a warped weeping willow still cry erupted. If Stalin First violin concerto would have heard, Shostakovich was treated immediately on a one-way ticket Gulag.

weeping
The poignant dissonant cries of the solo violin over basses as sad male choirs in the opening movement, Nocturno, leaves little guess about the emotional state of the composer. Every violinist is this piece a tour de force, if only because of the hysterical solo cadenza in which crushing Passacaglia, the third part.

What Kavakos was heard here, and not only here, bordered on the improbable. With the deep and rich tone of his Stradivarius, he found the music in the soul, not light helped by a formidable playing Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Valeri Gergiev, who remains unbeatable in this repertoire. He still with that silly skewer instead of a decent baton, or possibly his hands, able to direct, they forgive him, but it remains a rather ridiculous sight.

Applause
Three times Kavakos and Gergjev had stairs with 33 steps up and down, under a gradually increasing applause. When the violinist are laid flowers on the score and just whispered to the conductor we knew for sure he was going to play an encore. Beautiful that Gergiev on a chair next to the double basses sat and listened as admiringly as anyone. After the break it was time for Easter music: the prelude from Wagner’s last opera, Parsifal, where the wonderful music emerging as a sunrise.

Gergiev gave nice mix sounds that did passionate desire for the rest of the opera, but instead followed a not very startling Tagesgrauen and Siegfried Rheinfahrt from Götterdämmerung and downright miserable prelude from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg . This seemed to make sense, and certainly not the prelude from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Already in the first measures was the theme inaudible because Gergjev no distinction wished to distinguish between major and minor issues. The contrapuntal sequel was a soup and managed Gergiev with his toothpick not the balls to fish out

(By: Erik Voermans).