Also available on Blu-ray Violinist Lisa Batiashvili, cellist Gautier Capuçon, Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden present a sophisticated concert program of three great composers:...

Also available on Blu-ray

Violinist Lisa Batiashvili, cellist Gautier Capuçon, Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden present a sophisticated concert program of three great composers: Johannes Brahms, Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky and Franz Liszt. In Brahms´ Double Concerto Lisa Bathiashvili is playing her Guarneri “with tenderness and devotion” (Der Neue Merker). Her lyrical, velvety performance is contrasted by Capuçon’s more throaty and vibrating tone: “The two ways of playing seem to collide sometimes but to match brilliantly at the same time”. Christian Thielemann and his Staatskapelle “are mixing different colors as if they were putting emeralds and rubies on precious metal, creating huge sonority but always retaining clarity in it” (Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten).

REVIEW:

In the Brahms Double Concerto, violinist Lisa Batiashvili is bright and overtly lyrical, cellist Gautier Capuçon tonally full-throated if fairly formal. Tthe Andante is lovely (especially the questioning envoi at its close) and the finale—which follows on from it attacca—really dances.

Thielemann’s perfectly paced, sensitive, and deeply musical Romeo and Juliet is simply gripping. The warring Montagues and Capulets cut through generally mellow sound to create a real sense of tension; the love music is romantic but never soupy; and when it comes to the coda beyond the explosive timpani roll, Thielemann’s chilling grimace tells how the tragedy is affecting him. The coda itself is truly noble.

The programme ends with the variegated world of Liszt’s Les préludes, a performance both vivid and skillfully navigated, with the work’s close suitably majestic.

– Gramophone