Concertgebouw in the Konzerthaus: Liberated melodies and terrible mechanics
Die Presse
20.02.2023
Concertgebouw in the Konzerthaus: Liberated melodies and terrible mechanics
Cheers for violinist Lisa Batiashvili and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra under Paavo Järvi with Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Prokofiev's Fifth.
It's a kind of ballet from hell, a pointe dance on glowing coals: the second movement of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony is driven by a bizarre, demonic motor system. The Concertgebouw Orchestra understands capricious virtuosity – but there is more when Paavo Järvi is at the podium. If the return of the restless beginning is announced after the middle section with its ghost waltz, it does so at first at a measured tempo: the trumpets clatter in eighth notes until they finally feel their way to the main theme in the lower register. Is that all there is in this passage? No: with Järvi she has something clumsy, sluggish, even stupid - and in a grandiosely revealing way. You feel like you're in the office of a Soviet apparatchik who is trying to figure out what this composer has written and whether it's loyal to the regime. . .
Prokofiev's Fifth is one of those works where, given the right level of brilliance, success is all but certain. It's all the better that Järvi and Concertgebouw didn't content themselves with that during their acclaimed guest performance. Precision goes without saying when visiting from Amsterdam, but it is not an end in itself. This reading sounds pithy, full and at the peaks of the wide range of dynamics also excessive.
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