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The Mad Genius of Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Mai Kawabata on www.allthingsstrings.com,  June 13, 2011: Patricia Kopatchinskaja, a violinist from the Republic of Moldovia (between Romania and Ukraine), plays barefoot. She is known for her eccentric, brilliant interpretations of Beethoven—the Violin Concerto with Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre des Champs Elysées, and the Kreutzer Sonata with Fazil Say. In fact, the pianist was so enchanted with her playing that Say composed his “1,001 Nights in the Harem” Concerto for her—that's quite something, considering he has also successfully teamed up before with Maxim Vengerov, no less.

On June 9, Kopatchinskaja—or PatKop, as she’s called on her website—joined Say for an hour-long guest spot during his all-night “residency” at the Konzerthaus Berlin (“Die Lange Nacht des Fazil Say”).

There were no program notes. No one knew what to expect. All it said in the program booklet was “works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maurice Ravel, Béla Bartók, Dave Brubeck, Fazil Say, among others.”

Kopatchinskaja came on to the stage wearing a burgundy boho-chic sleeveless gown with black lace accents. No shoes. Speaking into a microphone, Say introduced his duo partner (they’ve been together since 2006), and said with a smile, “first she will play a piece lasting approximately one minute and then you will know who she is.”

Jorge Sanchez-Chiong’s “Crin” (1997) is a manic explosion of slides, left-hand pizzicatos, and ricochets (a little like Sciarrino’s music) combined with nonsense words and percussive sounds made with the voice. Crazy virtuosity. Pure theater. Kopatchinskaja nailed it, and even made us laugh as she pointed the bow directly towards the audience and said, “Pah!”

The atmosphere was electric. Of course, there were no program notes. Who could look away, even for a moment? 

She was totally riveting.

Say announced all the pieces from the stage. The first piece they played together was the “Blues” movement from Ravel’s Sonata. They played so well together it was as if they were magnetically connected. She added notes to the violin line, Gypsy-style turns and runs, all intuitive and natural.

The word dynamic doesn't even begin to cover it. 

A free spirit, she turned her back to the audience to lean into the piano in defiance of convention, if the music called for it. And yet—and this was what’s so exciting about her—it’s not all about her. It’s all about the music: she embodies it, she becomes it, she is it.

She played Bartok’s Rumanian Dances like you’ve never heard them before, full of earthy rhythms and Gypsy-ish improvisations that came naturally to her, having been born into a family of Gypsy musicians, but also with the technical mastery and golden sound of a top soloist.

And then there's Fazil Say’s Violin Sonata, in three movements, which calls for beautiful sotto voce melodic playing at one extreme and, at the other, a col legno ricochet down-bow stroke so diagonal that by the time she reached the point of the bow, it was bouncing on the fingerboard almost at the scroll.

Just as spectacular was “Cleopatra,” a solo piece also composed by Say for a competition and then edited by Kopatchinskaja. It has a recurring pizzicato theme, recitatives packed with augmented seconds and tritones (much in the style of the “1,001 Nights” Concerto), an amazing tremolo/trill effect in double-stopped glissando sixths, and a perpetuum mobile section near the end.

This last piece ends ppp with a pizzicato, and she looked up on the last note with a look of shocked surprise, for theatrical effect. She performed like a theater person—an actor—or maybe even a mime.

The same was said about Paganini.

Her vertical axis was about as contorted as Paganini’s was supposed to have been, as well. Her body snaked around making improbable movements—how did she play like that? —and yet she and her violin moved magically as one.

For the remainder of the set, they were joined by the wonderful Turkish percussionist Burhan Öçal for Say’s original arrangements of Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca,” Paganini’s Caprice No. 24, an excerpt from Say’s own Violin Concerto, and Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”

While Say and Öçal improvised a dialogue, and Öçal took a solo, the violinist sat on a step on the stage, one leg crossed, chin in hand, bobbing her head in time with the music—no precious diva-ish stage exits at the risk of interrupting her companions. In fact, the final stage exit was playfully done, “Farewell Symphony-style,” with her and Öçal walking off still playing their instruments sempre diminuendo, leaving Say alone at the piano.

There will be those who claim her playing is not to their taste—she’s yet to record any Bach, for example—yet I think it would be hard for anyone to deny that she has some special quality. She could be crazy or a genius, maybe both. Still only in her mid-30s, she is without a doubt the single most exciting violin talent I’ve even seen emerge.

Wow. 

CD-Review: Kopatchinskaja Rapsodia

Mark Pullinger in International Record Review, February 2011: Patricia Kopatchinskaja doesn't shy away from controversy. Indeed, she appears to revel in it, her previous discs having disgruntled sections of the international music press. Her recording of Beethoven's Violin concerto (Naïve V 5174) caused consternation (not in these quarters) at its use of overdubbing in the cadenza, while her Ravel Violin sonata (Naïve V5146) saw accompanist Fazil Say play the "Blues" movement on a prepared piano. Kopatchinskaja even publishes bad reviews on her website (www.patriciakopatchinskaja.com), which are located, appropriately, in the "Trashbin", and is disarmingly open about trying something different: "For those who disagree there are many normal versions on the market". I applaud risk-taking of this sort and find the results both challenging and refreshing.

The latest disc is something of a family affair, with elements of what could be labelled "crossover" - a combination which has the potential kiss of death hanging over it in critical circles; to my mind it's a triumph. Kopatchinskaja hails from Moldova and. in an engagingly personal (and personable) booklet note, describes her homeland and how her father, Viktor Kopatchinsky, upped sticks and travelled to Chisinau to learn the cimbalom, becoming "the most famous cimbalom player in the former Sovjet Union".  His ensemble, Rapsodia, provides the disc with its title, a melting pot of traditional music interspersed with twentieth century art music inspired by gypsy rhythms. 

Joined by a double bass player and Patricia's mother, Emilia, on violin and viola, the ensemble performs music from Moldova and nearby Roumania, such als "Ciocarlia" ("Skylark"), a rollicking lautaresc tune most famous for its quotation in Enesecu's Roumanian Rhapsody Nr 1. Half-way through, Kopatchinskaja breaks into a thoroughly modern improvisation, imitating a lark. Thus, even before the first track is over, you realize this is a bit different. Dinicu's Hora staccato goes with a swing and the disc ends with three foot-tapping Calusari dances, featuring virtuosic fiddle and cimbalom playing reminding very much of the infectious gipsy band Taraf de Haidouks. Kopatchinsky gets his chance to shine in a couple of solos, played on his 120-year old cimbalom.

Enescu's Third Violin Sonata is in the character of Roumanian folk music, without actually quoting any. Kopatchinskaja is accompanied by Mihaela Ursuleasa, a partnership thoroughly at home in a score filled with masses of detailed dynamic markings and instructions, yet transcending them to give a performanece which feels wholly idiomatic. There is serious competition from Leonidas Kavakos and Péter Nagy, yet frequently they seem tame compared with this fiery duo. The fifth bar of rehearsal mark 1 (0'45") is much more "birdlike" beneath Kopatchinskaja's bow. She swoops and slides with relish and at 2'302 attacks with real emphasis, in contrast to the light staccato with the tip of the bow at 5'25". The conclusion of the first movement finds Kopatchinskaja scaling down to an unbelievably fragile wisp, an ethereal sound, presumably bowed dangerously close to the bridge, re-created in the second movement until a dramatic outburst. She takes a slightly more deliberate tempo than Kavakos's in the third movement, lending an accented stomp to proceedings.

Father and daughter combine in György Kurtag's Eight Duets for violin and cimbalom, miniature fragments not without drama. Kopatchinskaja admits that the composer found some of their tempos too slow, but explains that it's her role to interpret the music. She accompanies herself on playback in Ligeti's brief duo, confessing how difficult she found it understanding her own rubatos! I didn't take to Jorge Sanchez-Chiong's Crin - the final section of a piece in which the soloist accompanies herself by means of nonsensical vocalisations, but there is no doubting her skill.

The greatest element of surprise comes in the form of Ravel's Tzigane, written as a distillation or caricature of gypsy music. The original instrumentation was for violin and piano, with a luthéal attachment to recreate the sound of a cimbalom, but when your father is a virtuoso cimbalom player, what does one do? Get Dad to transcribe the piano part for his instrument! The resulting performance has the authenticity of Hungarian folk music. Ravel could hardly have imagined, however much the cimbalom might struggle to reproduce all the notes. Kavakos includes Tzigane on the same disc as Enescu's Thrid Sonata and, as pleasing as that performance is, this has an extra dash of paprika. 

Kopatchinskaja's boldness and spirit of adventure should appeal to like-minded listeners. Having been hugely impressed with her discs for Naïve thus far, I must award this disc the "IRR Outstanding" accolade, most richly deserved.

   

Best Chamber Music Concert 2010: "Barefoot Fiddler" - Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Australian Chamber Orchestra

Limelight Magazine (Australia), January 2011: Patricia Kopatchinskaja has made a career out of doing things differently. A violinist of stunning technical gifts, she shuns the virtuoso showpieces of Paganini and Ysaye, preferring recondite fare such as the works of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian - although Kopatchinskaja's playing makes you wonder why it's not standard repertoire. Born in Moldova, Kopatchinskaja has inherited the free-wheeling style of the gipsy violinist (her playing barefoot isn't just a gimmick, it stops her footstomping from interrupting the music). Few soloists can convey the sheer fun of music making of Kopatchinskaja - few performers in any genre seem to have as much fun as she does on stage - and its impossible not to be transported by the violinist's pure, manic energy.

As in 2007 the 2010 Australian Tour of Kopatchinskaja with the Australian Chamber Orchestra was voted "Best Chamber Music Production of the Year" by the readers of the Magazine Limelight.

CD-Review: Rapsodia - Kopatchinskaja’s exuberance is infectious.

Julian Day in Limelight Magazine (Australia) 12.1.2011: Dubbed the “barefoot fiddler”, Patricia Kopatchinskaja is a young violinist from Moldova. This intimate disc captures her raw energy and stylistic hunger, with a mixture of folksongs, 20th century and contemporary classical works for violin with accompanying piano, double bass and cimbalom.

It’s hard not to get swept up in her sheer love of music, her sense of freedom and spontaneity. You hear this especially in the folksongs. Likewise, the fully-notated classical works sound freshly invented. And Kopatchinskaja’s liner notes are as fun and as frank as her playing.

Dubbed “the music of my life”, the disc is a family affair. Joining Kopatchinskaja at various points is either or both of her parents, Emilia and Viktor, playing violin/viola and cimbalom respectively.

The mix of styles can at times seem a little bizarre, even if the pieces share Eastern European roots. The standouts for me are the folksongs, although they’re complemented well by the more classical outings. Ravel’s Tzigane might be an obvious inclusion and Enescu’s folk-inspired pieces are perhaps a little dry, however Ligeti’s unadorned Duo and younger composer Jorge Sanchez-Chiong’s vignette Crin are gems. Overall, a disc full of vivid colour and confident virtuosity.

theStrad recommends: CD Rapsodia - Naive V 5193

Matthew Rye, The STRAD, January 2011: Patricia Kopatchinskaja returns to her familial roots with this disc, exploring the music of her native Moldova, neighbouring Romania (which provides her homelands language) and elsewhere, in the company, among others, of her fiddler mother and celebrated cimbalom-playing father. The alternation of composed music with improvisations and folk dances from Viktor Kopatchinsky's traditional repertoire sets up all kinds of resonances, for example with Kopatchinskaja's dazzling rhapsody on the song of the lark in the opening extemporised Ciocàrlia finding its mirror in the central movement of Enescu's Third Violin Sonata - in all an exuberant, remarkably free-wheeling account, even by the standards of the composer's intentend rubato.

And talking rubato, purists may baulk at the expressive freedom she brings to the opening of Ravel's Tzigane, but coupled with her father's virtuoso adaptation of the accompaniment to his cimbalom, the effect is highly appropriate in evoking its folk inspiration.

More contemporary sounds from violin and cimbalom are explored in Kurtag's typically aphoristic Duos, while in Ligeti's violin Duo Kopatchinskaja duets with her multitracked self - "the hardest collaboration in my life", she says in respect of the rubato required. Throughout the disc, her sense of metrical freedom and her bird-like flitting between registers and tonal coulourings are breathtaking and demand to be heard.

    

‘Rapsodia’ - Dinicu. Enescu. Kurtág. Ligeti. Ravel. Sanchez-Chiong Naïve V5193 (73’ • DDD) Patricia Kopatchinskaja vn, with Emilia Kopatchinskaja vn/va, Viktor Kopatchinsky cimb, Martin Gjakonovski db, Mihaela Ursuleasa pf

Arnold Whittall, Gramophone, January 2011: Hard-bitten music critics tend to approach family get-togethers with caution – especially when they claim to bridge the folk/art-music divide. But this is a superior example of the genre: even if Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s booklet-notes verge on the self-congratulatory, her playing, and that of everyone else involved, leaves you in no doubt that refined sophistication and raw intensity can fuse, setting the music on fire.

Rapsodia was Viktor Kopatchinsky’s folk-music ensemble, in which his wife Emilia – Patricia’s mother – played violin and viola. The examples of their work, which alternate with the art-music items, are all under five minutes long and show a rich, multi-layered musical thinking which is never more mesmerising than when Viktor’s cimbalom is to the fore. The most rhapsodic composition on the disc is George Enescu’s Third Violin Sonata – “in the style of popular Romanian music” – expansive, just managing not to lose its musical threads and with an extraordinarily melodramatic ending. Ravel’s Tzigane might seem the odd piece out in this programme yet, with the piano part transcribed for cimbalom, it comes across as no less earthily characterful than the disc’s most concentrated and un-folklike item, Kurtág’s set of eight tiny duos for violin and cimbalom.

Kurtág’s riveting miniatures are the perfect complement to Enescu’s expansiveness. In addition, Kopatchinskaja offers two short pieces in which she duets with herself – Ligeti’s Duo and a fragment of Crin by Jorge Sanchez-Chiong which has her declaiming a text while playing her violin. This well-recorded disc is a breath of the freshest musical air.

This CD is "editors choice" of the Gramophone Magazine, January 2011.

CD Rapsodia

Stephen Eddins, www.allmusic.com, December 2010: Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya has recorded both traditional repertoire and music by contemporary Turkish composer Fazil Say, and on this album she turns to folk traditions of Eastern Europe and music based on those traditions. In addition to the folk music of Hungary, Romania, and the Ukraine, she plays works by Romanians George Enescu and Grigoras Dinicu, Transylvanian György Ligeti, Hungarian György Kurtág, Maurice Ravel, and Cuban-Chinese composer Jorge Sanchez-Chiong, who was a classmate of Kopatchinskaya's in Vienna. The roots of this music are close to Kopatchinskaya's heart and the album is clearly a labor of love. Her father, Viktor Kopatchinsky, who was the premiere cimbalom player in the Soviet Union and is a dazzling virtuoso in his own right, joins her, as does her mother, violinist and violist Emilia Kopatchinskaya, and pianist Mihuela Ursuleasa and bassist Martin Gjakonovski. All the performers play with brilliant and uninhibited flair, and not surprisingly they have the most freedom to cut loose in the folk music, which comes off with ferocious primal energy. In Dinicu's Hora staccato in the arrangement by Heifetz, once a staple of violinists' encore repertoire, the cimbalom takes the piano part. Ravel made a version of his Tzigane for a piano modified to sound like a cimbalom, so it was a natural step to arrange the part for an actual cimbalom, and it's entirely effective, allowing the familiar piece to be heard in a new light. The most avant-garde piece, and one of the most entertaining, is Sanchez-Chiong's Crin, which requires as much virtuoso vocalization as fiddling. The appealing performances and repertoire make this an album that should be of interest to anyone who loves Eastern European folk music and spirited music-making. Naïve's sound is clear, present, and vibrant.

Album: Enescu / Ligeti etc, Rapsodia – Patricia Kopatchinskaja (Naive)

Anna Picard, The Independent, 12 December 2010: Best known for her quicksilver Beethoven, Patricia Kopatchinskaja opens up her family album in this quirky collection of folk and folk-inspired music. The daughter of a cimbalom virtuoso and a classically trained violinist, she is equally at home in both worlds. Enescu's Sonata No 3 is framed by dances and extrapolations by Ligeti and Kurtag. Ravel's touristic "Tzigane" is transformed, while Jorge Sanchez-Chiong's "Crin" sees Kopatchinskaja vocalise Dada-esque syllables to kinetic pizzicato. Spicy and surprising.

Best Musical Moments Of 2010: Tim Munro was enraptured with violinist Patricia Kopanchiskaja's energetic style

Tim Munro npr-music, 10.12.2010: I've been a card-carrying devotee of the Australian Chamber Orchestra since I first saw them at age 18, led by their music director, concertmaster and surfer-in-residence, Richard Tognetti (yes, he is a good surfer). This conductorless, all-standing band takes a go-for-the-jugular approach that drags the blood, sweat, and tears out of every phrase of music it plays, whether it is a Vivaldi concerto, a Stravinsky ballet or a Beethoven string quartet.

So I was expecting great things from the ACO concert I heard this past July in my hometown of Brisbane, Australia, with a guest concertmaster I'd not heard of — the Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

The daughter of folk fiddlers, this small, fiery, barefoot woman led the players with a jerky, extroverted physicality that perfectly matched her approach to the music. She took each piece by the scruff of the neck, and shook it until it begged to be released, drawing playing of a high-pitched, nearly blood-curdling intensity that was both uncomfortable and totally compelling. In her hands, Vivaldi was thrilling and savage, Schutz had a transfigured, glassy beauty, and Mansurian sobbed with profound sorrow. The ACO string players were clearly having the time of their lives as they attempted to match her every willful bow stroke, every barely audible soft note, every unanticipated hesitation, and the audience seemed thrilled to be along for the ride, cheering and laughing throughout.

In an interview on ABC Radio National's Music Show program, Kopatchinskaja said that all music should be performed with the intention of folk music, which is "playing from heart to heart for people, dancing, laughing, being sad, and crying about men who died in war."

Her website is as quirky as her playing. It includes a page of bad reviews, and has a collection of oddball thoughts on composers she loves. As for critics, she says, "If some are shocked we do not apologize."

I found this concert totally engrossing and endlessly inspiring. Kopatchinskaja is essentially a new music specialist (old music is a "hobby"), and brings the emotional extremity, searching intensity, and the wildly diverse influences of contemporary classical music to everything she touches. She engages her audience totally, inviting them into her fabulous musical world with a stage presence that is entirely devoid of artifice or pretense. And she's having the bloody time of her life on stage, sharing her crazy, manic love for this music.

 

Fascinating Folk - Erik Levi applauds Patricia Kopatchinskaja's folk-themed recital

BBC Music Magazine Choice December 2010 (Chamber Music)

Performance: Sound:

***** *****

Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine, December 2010: Following her extraordinary recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Patricia Kopatchinskaja has returned to the formative influences of Eastern European folk music for her latest release. Working in tandem with her father Viktor, a virtuoso cimbalom player and her mother Emilia, who performs on both the violin and the viola, she has assembled a fascinating recital juxtaposing a wide range of concert music with an exhilarating selection of ethnic dances. Some of this latter material may be already be familiar to listeners, for example the opening number Ciocârlia which draws upon the same melodies as the final section of Enescus First Romanian Rhapsody. 

A number of items in the programme really stand out. In her booklet notes Kopatchinskaja is disarmingly honest in confessing that Kurtag did not fully endorse the present performance of his Eight Dous for Violin and Cimbalom, although to my ears the playing is utterly compelling. There can be no contention however over the ravishing account of Enescu's Sonata No.3, both Kopatchinskaja and her partner Mihaela Ursuleasa projecting an instinctive feeling for the almost improvisatory musical line. Finally Ravel's Tzigane is presented not as an empty virtuoso showpiece but as a work brimming with colour and imagination. In this context Kopatchinskaja's decision to perform it with the piano part arranged for cimbalom seems fully justified, expecially given that the composer originally wrote an alternative version of the accompaniment for luthéal, a piano whose hammers were modified so that they actually sounded like a cimbalom.

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja: CD Rapsodia (classical selections)

www.swissinfo.ch, 28.10.2010: Still in her early thirties, Patricia Kopatchinskaja belongs to the top violinists in the world. She has become famous for her bold, expressive interpretations, which seek to stretch music to its limits. Born in Moldawia into a musician's family, Kopatchinskaja later studied in Vienna and Berne. Since 10 years she has settled in the Swiss capital, from where she regularly tours the world. On Rapsodia she comes up with fulminant sounds of her youth, both folkloric and classical. Of eminence is the collaboration with her parents, both full-blooded musicians. The cymbalom virtuosity of her legendary father Viktor Kopatchinsky reaches thereby outstanding levels.

 

 
Kopatchinskaja Rapsodia - Music by Enescu, Ligeti, Kurtág, Dinicu, Ravel, Sanchez-Chiong
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Emilia Kopatchinskaja (violin/viola), Viktor Kopatchinsky (cimbalom), Mihaela Ursuleasa (piano), Martin Gjakonovski (bass), Naïve V5193

Gavin Dixon on www.classical-cd-rewiews.com, 18.10.2010: It is a classic recording industry tale: a young soloist signs to a big label, releases a début album of a famous concerto, and when that shows healthy sales she is let lose on a more esoteric pet project.

In the case of Particia Kopatchinskaja, her big selling début album was the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Herreweghe, while this one is about as different as you could imagine, folk music from Moldova.

But it is not the result of an eccentric whim, quite the opposite. For this is the music of Kopatchinskaja's youth. Her parents are both folk musicians, and both feature prominently on the disc, very prominently in the case of her father Viktor, whose cimbalom provides the defining timbre to many of the works. Or perhaps that is just unfamiliarity on my part, the other instruments being the more familiar violin, viola, double bass and piano. The cimbalom has quite a biting timbre, but the sheer variety of colours and textures it can produce in such expert hands fully justifies the quantity of exposure here. More often than not it is cast as accompaniment to the violin, a task Kopatchinsky executes with a level of grace and subtly that you would rarely associate with the instrument.

The repertoire mixes folk tunes with works of classical composers steeped in the musical traditions of the area. The contrast between the two can be quite extreme, and the sheer energy of the genuine folk tunes is rarely matched by the notated works. There is a curiously American feel about many of the tunes, the opening 'ciocârlia', for example sounds a lot like a hoe down – some common ancestry perhaps?

The composers represented are a diverse group. Enescu is the most conservative of them, which is saying something. His 3rd Violin Sonata is about the most civilised of the folk-inspired works on the disc. The Ligeti duo is a very early work, and there is little here for fans of the composer's mature music. The Kurtág, by contrast, is a real masterpiece, one of those collections of tiny, brittle musical fragments for which he is known. Avant-garde cimbalom music is something of a rarity, to say the least, so the idiomatic use of the instrument here is all the more impressive. The subtlety of the cimbalom writing also comes as a surprise, and most of it is in the quieter dynamics where the instrument takes on a round, warm sonority. Kopatchinskaja confesses in the liner notes that Kurtág listened to this recording and didn't like it, too slow apparently. She is unrepentant though, and I'd certainly agree that her interpretation is eminently defencible.

Ravel seems slightly out of place in this programme, but he is another composer whose intentions are liberally interpreted. Specifically, the piano part to his 'Tzigane' which is meant to imitate a cimbalom. No prizes for guessing the twist here, although yet again the subtly of the cimablom playing is the most remarkable part of the result. At the other end of the aesthetic spectrum we have 'Crin' by Jorge Sanchez-Chiong, a work for solo violin with a range of vocal effects from the player. It's good fun, sort of Cathy Berberian mixed with a folk fiddle, and the extended techniques on the violin are as exotic as the vocal sounds.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja seems to have found the ideal relationship with her record label Naïve. I can't imagine this will sell as well as her Beethoven Concerto, especially given the near universal praise that previous recording received. But this other side of her musical personality is at least as interesting, and her skill as a musician is just as evident here. It is the sort of disc that only usually gets modest distribution among specialists, so here's hoping that the backing of a reasonably large industry player can find it the audience it deserves.

Kopatchinskaja: Rapsodia

www.thisisnottingham.co.uk, 1.10.2010: An exotic disc from a Moldovan classical violinist, who plays both parts in Ligeti's rootsy Duo. Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa partners the fiddle in Enescu's Third Sonata, and a jazz bassist joins the party for Hora Staccato. The violinist's father also sparkles on the dulcimer-like cimbalom.
****

 

Rapsodia - Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Emilia Kopatchinskaja (violin, viola), Viktor Kopatchinsky (cimbalom), NAÏVE | V5193 | CD | 822186051931

www.savd.com.au, September 2010: Following Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s sensational ACO tour of July 2010, our favourite barefoot fiddler proudly presents her national heritage and family tradition on this album of Eastern European folk-inspired music. Rapsodia was the name of her father's band: the most famous cimbalom virtuoso of the former Soviet Union, Victor Kopatchinsky here accompanies the spirited violin duo of Patricia and her mother, Emilia. This unique family portrait includes Patricia's ACO encore piece, the wickedly mercurial ‘Crin’.

 

BAREFOOT FIDDLER at Angel Place Recital Hall, Sydney.

Kevin Jackson's Theatre Reviews 21.7.2010: ‘The Barefoot Fiddler’, is an alias for Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the Guest Director with The Australian Chamber Orchestra and Lead Violin for this program. The hallmarks of Ms Kopatchinskaja’s musical interests are evident simply in the variety of choice of her Directorship for this concert. From a transcription for a string ensemble of Heinrich Schutz’s last work (1671), “German Magnificat, SWV494” to an Australian première of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian’s Violin Concerto No.2, “Four Serious Songs” (2006); Sandor Veress’ “Four Transylvanian Dances” (1944/49); Australian Elena Kats-Chernin’s composition “Zoom and Zip” (1997); Joseph Haydn’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in G major [Hob.VII:4] (C.1761); and finally Antonio Vivaldi’s “La Tempesta di Mare” Concerto in E flat for violin, Op.8 No.5, RV253”.

But more even more interesting is her approach to the work. In bare feet Ms Kopatchinskaja leads the Concert and plays her violin in a very embodied, physical manner. Mostly hunched over with a curved back, she appears to be possessed by the very vibrations of the sounds, and expressively responds, particularly facially, to the notes of the scores. She snorts, stamps her feet and mouths her responses to the experience around her. Like a mischievous troll or gremlin she alternately scowls and smiles, totally possessed by the work she is engaged in. A “wildcat” in action.

In an interview in the program notes (Clemency Burton-Hill, 2010) Ms Kopatchinskaja in talking of the program says “I think we need all these elements: the animalistic music of folklore, the modern music for inspiration and fantasy, the classical to be the architecture and hold it all together.” The pressing beauty of the Mansurian, the pell mell escapade of the Veress, the contrasted zest of the Kats–Chernin ; the cheek of the Haydn reading and finally the exuberant liberties of the Vivaldi covered all of the quoted aspirations. “In some ways I feel I am unteachable, I always have to find my own way, with my own mistakes. I don’t feel so much the heavy weight of tradition; I’m not in a corset! I use the tradition to find the inspiration of creation. It’s not a cage.” It is this second to last phrase “I use the tradition (the architecture) to find the inspiration of a creation” that propelled me into a total surrender to her vision and treatment of these works. Her respect, regard for the music, that is the structure for her choices, that are very often surprising and to some traditionalists maybe challenging, that keeps one tantalised with her offers. That the musician is not more important than the music is the virtue of her performance. Sharing her idiosyncratic inspirations from the score and in the playing of her violin, the appearance of transcendent spontaneity and its infection of the Australian Chamber Orchestra is what triumphs.

This is my first engagement with Ms Kopatchinskaja and unlike, what I perceive, as ego driven eccentricities of, say Nigel Kennedy and his violin, I am not wearied or driven to objecting to the musician’s output or the manner in which she exudes her passions. In repeated experiences I may, but at present I look forward to hear more of her live contributions to my appreciation of the modern, folk and extending classic readings. It was a very exciting concert.

Sometimes too much continued energetic effort from all, more wafting gentleness, to contrast, would have been good, as it was accumulatively very exhausting. My empathy went to all on the stage in my applause. Bravo. Again.

 

Audience loves fiddler on the hoof

Steve Moffat, Fairfield Advance, 21.7.2010: Exciting Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja believes what many of us have known for a long time: as far as chamber orchestras go the ACO is simply the best in the world.

Branded “the barefoot fiddler” because she often performs shoeless, she likes to “provoke” the players “but they are able to play with complete spontaneity and respond to anything I ask them to do”. The ensemble was asked quite a lot in this concert, Kopatchinskaja’s second tour with the band.

After a first half which combined a string arrangement of Heinrich Schutz’s German Magnificat of 1671 with works new to Australian ears, the concert concluded with an edge-of-the-seat trio of works as diverse as they were exciting.

As well as provoking her colleagues, the high-energy guest violinist-director likes to throw down a challenge to her audience.

In Elene Kats-Chernin’s Zoom And Zip - part of the ACO’s repertoire since it was commissioned by them 13 years ago - Kopatchinskaja broke into wordless song. It was a distraction which seemed to surprise some of the orchestra and most of the listeners.

Later, in an adrenalin-pumped reading of Vivaldi’s The Storm At Sea concerto she slowed everything down to a drone in the largo and had the violas pluck and tap the strings of the harpsichord. The flow of Vivaldi’s beautiful melodic runs were sacrificed for rhythmic intensity, presumably to depict the storm’s swirling vortex. But despite the quirks - and the self-consciousness they produced - this was an exhilarating evening with some cutting-edge playing.

A highlight was Haydn’s fourth violin concerto which featured some gorgeous interplay between Kopatchinskaja and assistant principal Sasu Vanska. The finale was played with gypsy flair and enthusiasm. Maybe not the way Haydn had envisaged it, but you get the feeling he would have approved.

The discovery of the night came with the Australian premiere of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian’s violin concerto Four Serious Songs. This is a melodic work - the title pays tribute to Brahms after all - and it combines the earthiness of Masurian’s homeland’s folk tradition with the spiritual beauty of its religious music. It’s a fine work of contrasts - long impassioned solo passages in the lower register, sparse and then lush orchestration, ending almost in silence with celestial harmonics.

The ACO audience likes to be challenged and they certainly got their money’s worth from this dynamic, imaginative and engaging “barefoot fiddler”.

Earth moves as violinist gives concerto a big shake

Neville Cohn, The West Australian, 16 July 2010: Vivaldi is almost certainly the only composer ever to have been born during an earthquake. And his Violin Concerto in E flat, though called Storm at Sea, could just as easily have been named Earth Tremors. Certainly, ace fiddler Patricia Kopatchinskaja did wonders as she revealed the startling turbulence of the work in a way that registered high on the musical Richter scale.

This diminutive violinist, playing as ever in bare feet, demonstrated convincingly that in international terms, she is second to few in her mastery of her instrument. The finale of the Vivaldi work was rivetingly impressive. Here, Kopatchinskaja demonstrated fantastic joinery at top speed.

She was no less convincing in Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian's violin concerto known as Four Serious Songs. This inhabits a very different mood world, music that is the apotheosis of sadness.

And as Kopatchinskaja made her way through this achingly melancholic concerto, the strings of the ACO responded with an answering depth of feeling. This was especially so in the finale, which was informed by breast-beating anguish.

In the first movement of Sandor Veress' Transylvanian Dances, ACO principal cellist Timo-Veikko Valve played his brief solo with gut- wrenching intensity. And the exotic rhythmic patterns of the second movement were flawlessly essayed. Loud foot stamping by the orchestra in the finale emphasised the atavistic wildness of the music.

Elena Kats-Chernin's Zoom and Zip, for all its raw energy, rather outstayed its welcome, talking a great deal without saying very much.

Haydn's rarely heard Violin Concerto in G was a fine vehicle for Kopatchinskaja to demonstrate clarity of line, phrase-shaping finesse and purity of tone.

 

Barefoot violinist in Wonderland - Patricia Kopatchinskaja set a freezing Canberra on fire with her performance with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Vincent Plush, The Australian July 12, 2010: Lewis Carroll would have relished this winter touring program by the ACO. Everything seems inside out and upside down, with riddles, conundrums and revelations galore. It's all a bit mad, a huge party with a young woman leading us down a mirrored maze of music history. Outrageous and provocative, it's also one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining ACO concerts I have attended.

On her first visit to Australia in 2007, Patricia Kopatchinskaja (universally known as "PatKop") delighted ACO audiences with her unorthodox readings and stage antics. This dynamic 33-year-old violinist from Moldova quickly established herself as "the barefoot fiddler", claiming she can experience musical vibrations from the concert stage floor. Despite Canberra's below-freezing temperatures at the weekend, this barefoot elf cooked up a storm.

PatKop's fiddling is part Gypsy princess, part Stephane Grappelli, part Paganini. It treats scores not as fusty manuscripts of inviolable rules but as recipes for unusual and delectable treats. Most work, a few don't. After a while, equating minor keys with performances that are sad and slow and, conversely, major keys that are bright and snappy becomes formulaic.

The most persuasive argument of this program is the notion that art music has its roots in folk traditions. The bracing Transylvanian Dances of Sandor Veress and the mercurial Second Violin Concerto by Tigran Mansurian are infused with the folk inflections of Bartok and Kodaly. PatKop mimed and danced this music, its physicality every bit as intrinsic as the miasma of sounds it produces.

Heard alongside these sophisticated rhythmic delights, the energy behind Elena Kats-Chernin's Zoom and Zip, composed for the ACO in 1997, sounds controlled and even stilted, with its classic rock chord progressions emerging from four-bar phrases, repetitions and sudden gear-shifts of tonality.

Surprisingly, it was left to Haydn and Vivaldi to return us to Lewis Carroll Land. PatKop tossed off two of their violin concertos with devilish delight. Here again, the seeds of folk music sprouted in unabashed profusion. These two venerable giants of music had their own bands of musicians on which to experiment. Papa Haydn had his Esterhazy orchestra and the Red Priest wrote for the girls at that orphanage in Venice. In similar fashion, PatKop transformed the ACO into her own laboratory, producing Jimi Hendrix-inspired cadenzas and sea-sounds spilling from the strummed strings of the harpsichord.

Today, the National Summit of the Music Council of Australia debates why classical music has lost touch with people. The solution is simple: everyone should attend this ACO concert.

Melbourne Town Hall, tonight; Adelaide Town Hall, tomorrow; Perth Concert Hall, Wednesday; Sydney Opera House, Sunday; QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane, July 19; City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney, July 20-21; Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong, July 22

 

Barefoot Fiddler | Australian Chamber Orchestra  

Simonne Michelle-Wells, www.australianstage.com.au, 12 July 2010: Clearly music is a whole body experience for violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. An accomplished and award-winning musician, Moldovan born Kopatchinskaja is back touring the country this month as guest director and soloist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Her 2007 tour with ACO was voted best chamber music production of the year by Australian Limelight magazine and, if Sunday’s performance is anything to go by, history is about to repeat itself.

The program, developed by Kopatchinskaja, is an eclectic repertoire of contrast and beauty, spanning more than four centuries: from the little known Four Translyvanian Dances composed by Veress to the virtuosic Vivaldi. And could there be a better ensemble than the ACO to complement Kopatchinskaja’s own unique and intensely physical style? Renowned as the only orchestra that performs standing up, and widely known for their adventurous and invigorating performances and recordings, they’re the perfect partner for the barefooted Kopatchinskaja who dances and sings to the music, whether she’s playing or not. Kopatchinskaja, who has played with orchestras all over the world, including the Vienna Philharmonic, has quite the love affair with the ACO, calling them the best in the world.

Included in the program is ‘Four Serious Songs’, a violin concerto by Mansurian, composed in 2006 and presented for the first time in Australia. The concerto, an animated and moving piece, had the capacity crowd holding its breath at the Melbourne Town Hall on Sunday through lamenting glissandos and moments of sheer, quiet beauty.

The musicians were clearly in their element performing the Four Translyvanian Dances, particularly the final piece, Dobbantos, which included some fervent feet stamping and lively interaction between the performers.

Crowd favourites were Haydn’s little known G major concerto, and Vivaldi’s dramatic “Storm at Sea” (Concerto in E flat major for violin), from the same program as the Four Seasons; both perfect vehicles for showcasing the immense talent and passion of Kopatchinskaja and the ACO musicians. It was during the Hayden concerto that this passion, and the way in which Kopatchinskaja experiences and executes the music through her entire being, was most evident. She makes those of us who will never pick up an instrument and make it sing understand the joy of what it must be like to do so, and how the magic of music can take us both out of and into ourselves like nothing else on earth.

 

The impish Barefoot Fiddler

Remi Messenger  on www.artshub.com.au from 12 Jul 2010: What a wonderful two hours of pure sight and sound - handsome people playing beautiful instruments creating music that soared and wailed and joyously danced. This was the extraordinary Australian Chamber Orchestra led by their vivacious guest director, lead violin and soloist - Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

She is the impish Barefoot Fiddler. But have no doubt; this young woman is a master of serious classical music and a rising star on the world concert circuit. Now in her thirties, Ms. Kopatchinskaja was born in Moldava. Her credits are extensive and her reputation is building due to appearances and awards from New York to London to Moscow. Yet her enthusiasm for returning to Australia to play with ‘our’ Chamber Orchestra seems deeply felt. I quote her from the program: “&ldots;.. they are able to play with complete spontaneity and respond to anything I ask them to do. They are always together, completely flexible, yet never losing themselves. It is a miracle that Richard (Tognetti) created... the ACO is absolutely the best ensemble in the whole world.”

A sold-out Melbourne Town Hall stage provided the grand setting of the pipe organ framed by black and gold velvet curtains. The eighteen musicians are dressed in black. The violins and the violas stand in various configurations depending on the piece of music. Sometimes a harpsichord is played. The cellos sit close to the bass player. This fine-tuned ensemble achieves quality that goes from profoundly intimate and delicate to a rushing flood of music that seems to sound like other instruments that aren’t actually there, from percussion to wind.

The opening piece was majestic music by Schütz written in 1671. It evoked deep mournful undertones of feeling and was our introduction to Ms Kopatchinskaja, both playing and conducting in her enchanting way. When she is not playing, she conducts with the bow in her right hand, with her animated face or even the bob of her head and shoulders. She is compelling to watch at all times as she sways and shudders with the music. My personal favourite and the centrepiece of the concert was the Australian premiere of the Violin Concerto #2, “Four Serious Songs” by contemporary Armenian composer, Tigran Mansurian. The songs open with the lead violin producing piercing, wailing notes, one evocative phrase after another, and continue with a “concert-drama” of thrilling dynamics. The range of choices is part of Kopatchinskaja’s art. She says, “&ldots; folklore is my blood, contemporary music is my air&ldots;.Then the classical music is my skeleton&ldots;.we need all these elements: the animalistic music of folklore, the modern music for inspiration and for joy, caressing our ears and uplifting our spirits.

Vivaldi’s Storm at Sea combines Kopatchinskaja’s virtuosity and the fun of plucking violas and stroking the internal harpsichord strings. At the close, the thunderous applause honoured the lovely camaraderie of the ensemble. Certainly the musicians had journeyed together for us. A final note - the free program booklet provided by the ACO was thorough and informative so I felt not only deeply moved and entertained by the concert but educated as well.

 

Fazil Say: 1001 Nights in the Harem

Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine, July 2010: Fazil Say is an accomplished and acclaimed pianist, but the main focus here is on his composing talents. Not so long ago there was a craze for late-18th and 19th-century music that mingled European styles with Turkish traditions. Say demonstrates that this kind of fusion remains fertile in the 21st-century.

His Violin Concerto, written for Patricia Kopatchinskaja who performs here, is colourful and constantly engaging, filled with ear-catching textures, rhythms and melodies. As with Sheherazade, the violin unspools fascinating tales, linking the movements with cadenzas which, as Say says, bind them into an ‘intensely atmospheric unity’. The orchestra match Kopatchinskaja’s vigour and suppleness with incisive playing.

 

CD-Review: Beethoven violin concerto and Romances

Robert Maxham, Fanfare Magazine 33:5, May/June 2010: Patricia Kopatchinskaja's account of Beethoven's Violin concerto adds five features that violinists haven't generally embraced. First, according to Robert Stowell's note, she follows the tempo markings that Carl Cerny provided for Beethoven's arrangement of the work for piano and orchestra(MM=126 in the first movement, MM=60 in the second, MM=100 in the third); second, she adapted Beethoven's cadenza for the piano version in a way that, third, necessitated some "overdubbing". Fourth, she tries to bring her version in line with what she has learned about Franz Clemen's lighter performing style (Rachel Bartion Pine paired a reading of Clement's work with her recording of Beethoven's conmcerto, 32:2, Cedille 106). And fifth, she incorporates elements from Beethoven's manuscript. The results of her research and of Herreweghe's sympathetic collaboration appear right away with the four tympani strokes (played here with what sounds like a slight crescendo) setting the more rapid tempo. The orchestra seemed reveberant, with chords decaying slowly, in the Arsenal of Metz where Kopatchinskaja recorded the work (described in the back of the booklet as "live and studio") in October 2010. Herreweghe leads the orchestra in a stormy account of the first movement's tuttis, and Kopatchisnkaja offers a similar robustness that hardly sounds like the elegant grace and "neatness" that have been ascribed to Clement. Her inclusion of "variants" lends the performance more interest, however, and those in the hushed middle section - and elsewehere in fact - should afford listeners not tied to the printed version with a number of not unpleasant shocks. The cadenza, with what sounds like two violins trading figurations in a surreal setting, may not give even alloyed pleasure, especially to those aversed to "gimmicks". The second movement seems to promise relief, but Kopatchinskaja enters with an eldrich timbre reminiscent of experiments by Anne-Sophie Mutter; and throughout the movement , she combines such novelties with turns of phrase that turn tradition upside down. The eerie transitional cadenza to the last movement introduces a  cheeky performance with occasional elements, like the cadenzas and a section that fleetingly imitates bagpipes, that will sound either fresh or impudent - and maybe both - dependent on the listeners point of view.  

The Romance in F, even taken at a brisk tempo, may not seem unfamiliar, but the pace certainly lends it a sense of crisp newness such as a fesh coat of paint gives to a picket fence. The Romance in G receives from Kopatchinskaja and Herreweghe a similar freshening, replete with archly pointed accents and timbral nuances.

The final work on the program, Beethoven's fragment from a Violin Concerto in C Major, apears in its fragemntary form rather than in Hellmesberger's completed arrangement. The notes relate that Kopatchinskaja examined the manuscript, which appeared to be an incomplete fair copy made in Bonn but broken off abruptly after 20 pages. It may have been an appealing work in its complete form, but it gives klittle hint of the profundities of his later works. It breaks off abruptly at its close.

The engineers have captured Kopatchinskaja close up (close enough to convey a hint of heavy breathing in the concerto in C Major fragment). Listeners accepting of exploratory ventures like this one should find in it much to pique their curiosity, while others may be offended by one, or several - or all, for that matter - of the performances' seemingly willful bizarrerie. Strongly recommended for the insight it might provide to those willing to set sail an largely unchartet waters.

 

BBC-Music-Magazine Award Ceremony in Kings Place, London

Harry Eyres, Financial Times, 24.4.2010: ...Fortunately, some musicians were able to be there in person – one not just to collect her award but to play for us. This was the young Moldovan Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whose disc of the Beethoven violin concerto was the surprise winner of the orchestral award. Genre-bending and full of gypsy devilry, Kopatchinskaya played a solo piece by George Enescu and Jorge Sanchez Chiong’s Crin, in which her voice and violin struck sparks off each other. If anyone thought classical music was stuffy or corseted, here was the riposte...

CD-Review: Beethoven violin concerto and Romances

Tully Potter in the STRAD, December 2009: Patricia Kopatchinskaja first caught my attention with a coruscating "Kreutzer" Sonata in which she was partnered by Fazil Say. Her next Beethoven project could hardly be more different: using an instrument in period setup, she has recorded the music for violin and orchestra, trying to come as close as possible to the delicate style of Franz Clement, first performer of the D-major concerto.

I think the disc is a considerable success, the best "authentic" version so far, although Kopatchinskaja's natural exuberance surfaces from time to time, especially in the cadenzas. At those moments I suspect she is closer to the style of a "natural" fiddler such as the quartet leader Ignaz Schuppanzigh.

Tempos are shockingly fast at first hearing. The opening tutti takes on the character of a Prussian march in Herreweghe's hands and I am not sure I shall ever like it. The solo playing is lovely, however. Contenting herself with a small, true sound, Kopatchinskaja achieves a wonderfully inward quality at all the important points in the first two movements. Her passagework is quite rhapsodic.

The cadenzas are her own transcriptions of those Beethoven wrote for the piano version of the concerto. Not even Pollini has inured me to that version, and I cannot think that Beethoven would have wanted these cadenzas used by a violinist (despite the examples of  Schneiderhan et al.).  Worse, Kopatchinskaja uses overdubbing to put in the piano's counter-melodies, introducing a note of artificiality. I must dissent from my collegue Robin Stowell's view that these cadenzas "are the nearest we have to Beethoven's ideal".   

The romances and the C major torso, played as a fragment with no editorial "ending" are beautifully done and the recordings are first-rate.

 

Best recordings 2009: Ludwig van Beethoven, Violin Concerto & Romances, Philip Herreweghe, O.de Champs-Élysées, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, naïve 5174

Jens F. Laurson, ionarts.blogspot.com 18.12.2009:  There were so many Beethoven Violin Concertos this year, but I’m spoiled for ‘good’, ‘fine’, and ‘excellent’ Beethoven concerto recordings - Renaud Capuçon, Janine Jansen, Lisa Batiashvili - and, quite frankly, bored. One didn’t bore but excited: Philippe Herreweghe’s with Patricia Kopatchinskaja. It reminds me most of my favorite recording (due to be re-issued in 2010), that of Zehetmair and Frans Brüggen. Like Zehetmair, Kopatchinskaja uses the Beethoven-Schneiderhan-cadenza, then goes off improvising in a style in line with the concerto’s time, not something gratuitously modern (which can be exciting, too). Kopatchinskaja is known for being a bit of a rebel, - but then again, in classical music you can attain that label just by playing barefoot. She also collaborates with Fazil Say, which might be more telling, - except that this concerto recording isn’t at all wilfull or crazed; it’s exiting and gentle, thundering and novel, - but terribly tasteful. Worlds apart from the ethereal magnificence I have experienced live with Julia Fischer, but just about as engrossing.

BBC CD-Review: Beethoven violin concerto - Kopatchinskaja has something genuinely individual to say about this masterpiece.

Andrew McGregor, BBC-Music online 10.12.2009: There has been a surprising number of new recordings of Beethoven recently from some fine fiddle players in the spring of their careers. Yet even amongst this crop of estimable newcomers, this one is unusually interesting, and not a little provocative.

From the first dry timpani strokes, the colours of period winds, the bite of the strings and propulsive tempo, you might guess that it’s Philippe Herreweghe and his Orchestre des Champs-Elysees. We’re made to wait a little for the soloist’s first entry, and the rising octaves are given an exploratory feel, - which is a clue to Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s approach. If you think you know her sound from previous recordings, you’d be forgiven for not recognising it; she’s deliberately channelling the spirit of the concerto’s first performer, Franz Clement, and contemporary descriptions of his playing: “light, silvery touch, a natural poise, and totally unforced spontaneity.”

Kopatchinskaja has extended that sense of freedom by experimenting with some of the variants in Beethoven’s autograph, all perfectly reasonable and unlikely to ruffle the plumage, unlike the cadenzas. She’s not the first violinist to reach for the ones Beethoven himself wrote for this concerto when he prepared a version of it for piano, but she’s the only violinist to attempt to play all the notes from the piano cadenzas, multi-tracking herself to startling effect. Which leaves the ‘historically informed’ credentials of the performance in a state of authentic confusion, yet at the same time amplifies the sense of adventure and genuine re-discovery.

The period orchestral sounds are vital; the flowing tempos are close to Beethoven’s metronome marks; Kopatchinskaja’s character, her soaring sound and improvisatory flair are compelling, and ultimately highly musical. How much you care for the performance in the end might depend on those ‘impossible’ cadenzas, yet there’s a spirit and freshness I haven’t heard since Thomas Zehetmair’s account of the Beethoven with Frans Bruggen.

Kopatchinskaja has something genuinely individual to say about this much-loved and recorded masterpiece, and it comes with attractively straight accounts of the two Romances, and the unadorned Fragment of what might have become a C major violin concerto.

Provocative Ludwig - Erik Levi hears an alternative Beethoven violin concerto
Violin Concerto; Romances Nos 1 & 2; Violin Concerto in C - fragment
Patricia Kopatcinskaja (violin); Orchestre des Champs-Élysées / Philippe Herreweghe, Naïve V 5174,   62:03 mins 

BBC Music Magazine Choice December 2009 (Orchestral)


Performance: Sound:

*****  *****

Erik Levi, BBC Music-Magazine, December 2009: Patricia Kopatchinskaja's warmly recorded account of the Beethoven Violin Concerto must be one of the most stimulating and provocative that has ever been committed to disc.  Studying the composer's autograph has inspired her to provide a radically different interpretation of the work to the one with which most people will be familiar. There are some very noticeable changes to both notation and articulation which take account of some of Beethoven's suggested alternatives for certain passages, especially in the first movement. Kopatchinskaja has also taken to heart anecdotal evidence regarding the delicate and extremely tender playing style of the work's original performer, Franz Clement. She opts therefore to interpret the solo part with a very light almost wispy sound, using a fluid almost operatic style in the recitative passages that follow the big orchestral tuttis. Superbly supported by Herreweghe and his expert period-instrument orchestra, she maintains a flowing tempo throughout each movement, yet is sufficiently flexible in her playing to accommodate rubato in the most expressive parts of the score.

Arguably the most controversial aspect of her performance, however, occurs in the cadenza where she presents a brilliant and dazzling  transcription of the cadenza Beethoven composed for the piano arrangement of the concerto and  resorts to overdubbing in places to accommodate the cascade of notes that were present in the original. Purists will no doubt regard this as a mere gimmick. Yet Kopatchinskaja brings it off brilliantly, and the duel that rages between the violin and solo timpani is startlingly effective.

 

Classical CD reviews: 
Janine Jansen: Beethoven/Britten
Patricia Kopatchinskaja: Beethoven 

Geoff Brown in The Times (London, printed edition) 6.11.2009: The names of great composers often begin with a B, though a CD coupling violin concertos by Beethoven and Britten may still prompt a small electric shock. Trust a discerning musician such as Janine Jansen to bring the pair together and make the union work. Given their premieres 134 years apart, both are works of big passions, and both feature timpani prominently. But their public profiles are very different. Beethoven’s concerto is the repertoire’s acknowledged giant; the Britten, though a masterly work, still seems to need special advocacy.

Jansen’s account, with Paavo Järvi and the London Symphony Orchestra, strongly advertises the concerto’s virtues. Kaleidoscopic moods, from skittish frolics and Spanish heat to final incendiary anger, flicker easily from her bow. But nothing is superficial, least of all the crowning passacaglia, heavy with the sorrows of war. The recording is forthright, and Järvi whips the LSO into a blaze to match Jansen’s passionate commitment to the score. Among recorded versions of the Britten, this now sits at the top.

With Beethoven’s concerto, there’s a far higher pile of CDs to climb. Jansen’s extreme beauty of tone and phrasing is definitely alluring, though it wasn’t until the cadenza in the first movement (she uses Kreisler’s) that I felt her heart had fully opened up. Järvi conducts the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, who play with a period instrument band’s lean thrust and lack of string vibrato: striking in itself, though not always the best setting for Jansen’s essentially romantic art.

No such dislocation exists in a rival Beethoven recording from the gifted Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (the two violin Romances and a separate concerto fragment fill out the disc). Her orchestra and conductor are official “authentic” specialists (Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, and Philippe Herreweghe). And she’s slimmed her tone to a fragile finesse, following the reported playing style of the concerto’s first interpreter, Franz Clement. Beethoven’s autograph score has been studied, too, prompting some changes from the norm.

Not everything is uniformly successful. The concerto’s cadenzas, adapted with overdubbing from Beethoven’s piano adaptation, certainly seem a trick too far. But the freshness of this interpretation is exhilarating, and as bar succeeds bar the soloist certainly beats Jansen for edge-of-the-seat excitement.

Four stars for Jansen Britten, but in the Beethoven, Kopatchinskaja wins.

 

Patricia Kopatchinskajas Beethoven - The freshness of this interpretation of Beethoven's violin concerto makes for exhilarating, edge-of-the-seat listening

Geoff Brown The Times Online (London), 6.11.2009: A Beethoven concerto recording from the gifted Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (the two violin Romances and a separate concerto fragment fill out the disc). Her orchestra and conductor are official “authentic” specialists (Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, and Philippe Herreweghe). And she’s slimmed her tone to a fragile finesse, following the reported playing style of the concerto’s first interpreter, Franz Clement. Beethoven’s autograph score has been studied, too, prompting some changes from the norm.

Not everything is uniformly successful. The concerto’s cadenzas, adapted with overdubbing from Beethoven’s piano adaptation, certainly seem a trick too far. But the freshness of this interpretation is exhilarating, and as bar succeeds bar the soloist certainly beats anyone for edge-of-the-seat excitement.

 

CD-Review: Beethoven - Violin Concerto, Romances, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Philippe Herreweghe, Orchestre des Champs Elysées, Naive Classique

Phils Classical Reviews, www.mindspring.com, November, 2009: Patricia Kopatchinskaja, native of Moldava who studied violin and composition in Vienna and Berne, has recently released Beethoven's Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra. It's an event that is sure to draw a lot of attention from critics and music lovers alike, for more reasons than one.

Together with music director Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre des ChampsÉlysées, Kopatchinskaja has aimed at a version of the Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 that is unlike any other you are likely to hear on record. It's not just a matter of period instruments in the orchestra. What our Moldavian mam'selle has done, in effect, is to recreate the sound of the solo violin and its relation to the orchestra that Beethoven would have heard when the concerto was premiered by Franz Clement on December 23, 1806. Clement's playing was  characterized by what a contemporary described as "a wholly individual lightness" and "an indescribable delicacy, neatness and elegance, an extremely delightful tenderness and  cleanness." His style was to lose out ultimately to bolder, more emotionally gripping schools of violin playing that were already in the ascendancy. Few performers, consequently, have attempted to embrace Clement's approach to the Beethoven concerto.

Until just now, that is. Kopatchinskaja's light, silvery touch, natural poise and spontaneity color every aspect of her performance, not just the gorgeously floating melody of the Larghetto that has made this concerto such an enduring favorite. Her tone is noticeably more slender than the "fat" tone most interpreters have chosen to cultivate when approaching this violin monument. Her tone is extremely selfassured, allowing her to resist the temptation to try to fight her way through the orchestra in the opening movement. She is patient, waits for her opportunity, and the result is a joy to hear positively sublime!

One other difference that will strike experienced Beethoven listeners is this young artist's choice of cadenzas, which are unlike any I'd previously encountered. Kopatchinskaja has gone back to the ones Beethoven wrote for the seldom played piano version of the concerto and arranged them for violin. That includes cadenzalike episodes in both the slow movement and the Rondo finale, as well as a bravura piece of writing that amounts to a kind of dance between violin and tympani at the end of the first movement. Coming after Beethoven's more conventional violin concerto, it momentarily give the listener the false, but electrifying, impression that the composer has neatly segued into another whole movement. Of course, Beethoven had opened the concerto in the heroic French "military" manner that was then popular, so we have already gotten a taste of the sensational sound of the tympani of that period.

 There follow lovely accounts of Beethoven's Romances in F minor, Op. 50 and G minor, Op. 40 for violin and orchestra, weaving their unfailing spell on the listener. (The former, by the way, is one of my favorite favorite selections when springing a game of "name that composer" on my guests; misled by the light, tender tone, most people will say "Mozart.") The program concludes with the incomplete Concerto in C Major, WoO5, which will always be the spark of controversy: is it an unfinished opening movement that breaks off after 7:35, or the fragment of a lost concerto? Since it is so ambitious, starting more hares than it can possibly kill, I am inclined to the former opinion. What we have is intriguing, to say the least.

 

CD Review: Beethoven works for violin and orchestra

James Leonard on www.allmusic.com November 2009:  There are a number of reasons why anyone who loves Beethoven's "Violin Concerto" would want to hear this recording by violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Most importantly, Kopatchinskaja is one heck of a violinist. She has a fabulous technique that covers everything from triple stops to sixty-fourth note runs to legato lines that go on and on and on. She's got a scrumptious tone that encompasses everything from the purely lyrical to the warmly sensual. And she's got enormous musicality that suffuses everything with the kind of effortlessly commanding mastery that Kreisler was so good at projecting. Kopatchinskaja delivers a performance of unmatched and unfeigned freshness. She sounds like she's rethought the whole piece, and her interpretation challenges listeners to keep up. Another reason is that Kopatchinskaja also uses her own adaptations of the cadenzas Beethoven wrote for the violin concerto when he later recast it as a piano concerto. She not only dispenses with the aging Kreisler cadenza, but adds some truly mind-bending changes to the performance, including a linking passage from the second to the third movement, plus cadenzas in the finale. The biggest change, however, is in the first movement's cadenza, a hair-raising romp complete with timpani obbligato. For some listeners, the addition of these extraordinary cadenzas will be reason enough to make this recording mandatory listening.

The inclusion of other infrequently recorded works, the two Romances for violin and orchestra, and the fragment from an uncompleted "C major Concerto," makes this disc even more attractive; the former receive reserved but passionate readings from Kopatchinskaja, while the latter gets an account of marvelous verve and zest, until it abruptly ends. Philippe Herreweghe and Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, with their characteristically pungent sound and sharply molded ensemble, give the soloist sufficient support, plus more than enough challenge. Naïve's clean but evocative sound allows the performance to emerge with stunning clarity.

CD-Review: Fazil Say - Violin Concerto '1001 Nights in the Harem', Alla Turca Jazz, Patara Ballet, Summertime Variations  

Julian Haylock, The STRAD, 16.10.2009: Having formed a performing duo with Patricia Kopatchinskaja in 2006, gifted pianist-composer Fazil Say composed this violin concerto for her only last year. Based on the same 1001 Nights tale made famous by Rimsky-Korsakov in his Sheherazade, Say's four-movement concerto also casts the solo violin as the work's principle storyteller. The first movement takes place inside the harem; the second at an all-night party; the third the following morning in the form of a set of variations on a well-known Turkish song; and the finale pulls together the various strands, ending with a highly evocative series of intoxicating sonorities.

The results are nothing short of sensational, with Kopatchinskaja bewitching the senses in playing of beguiling sensuality and rhythmic allure. At times she traces the work's seductive cool with such enraptured precision that it feels almost as though she is composing the music as she goes along. This is mesmerising artistry, captured in state-of-the-art sound, displayed alongside three other non-string works that provide further insight into Say's highly contagious creative world.

Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Romances Nos. 1 and 2; Fragment of Violin Concerto, WoO 5. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin; Orchestre des Champs-Élysées conducted by Philippe Herreweghe. Naïve. $16.99.

****

www.infodad.com, 1.10.2009: Although Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was not especially successful during the composer’s lifetime, it is impossible nowadays to think of it as a rarity. Nevertheless, the new performance by Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées under Philippe Herreweghe makes the work seem particularly fresh, partly because of the tempos chosen (which are intended to approximate the ones Beethoven wanted, to the extent that those are known); partly because of the use of period instruments, whose sonic world is different from that of modern ones; and partly because Kopatchinskaja – using a Giovanni Pressenda violin made in 1834 – not only plays with a light (pre-Romantic) touch but also uses variants of some passages included in Beethoven’s autography score. Add to this the soloist’s use of her own arrangements of Beethoven’s arrangements of cadenzas originally written for the piano version of this concerto – a possibility only in a recording, since overdubbing was needed to reproduce the full piano part on the violin – and you have a very unusual performance that enlivens the music while largely returning it to a version of its original form. And to continue the fascinations of this CD, there is a seven-minute fragment of an early Beethoven Violin Concerto, in C, which itself exhibits some very creative elements, such as the use of divided violas. Only the exposition and start of the development of the work’s first movement survive; hearing them makes for interesting speculation about what might have been, since there is evidence that at least the work’s first movement was completed. This CD is actually entitled “Beethoven: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra,” and is rounded out with the two Romances, which receive lovely, lyrical but not overdone performances.

CD-Review: Fazil Say: 1001 Nights In The Harem

Phillip Scott, Fanfare Magazine 33:1, Sept/Oct 2009: Fazil Say is a musician of many parts. Best known as a virtuoso pianist who has recorded CDs of Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and Gershwin, Say is also a jazzman who appears regularly at the Montreux Jazz Festival and a composer who looks to his Turkish roots for stylistic inspiration. All these facets of his musical persona are on show in this program.

The two solo pieces are sets of variations on the Rondo alla turca movement of Mozart’s 11th Piano Sonata in A and Gershwin’s Summertime, respectively. The Mozart is more a series of jazzy restatements of the music than variations on it. Both pieces were recorded live in Tokyo in 2007. They display Say’s considerable chops, particularly a segment of the Summertime variations over a rapid walking bass, and both are fun if not very subtle.

Mozart turns up once more in the ballet Patara, commissioned for the WienMozart Festival of 2006 in Vienna. The same sonata begins this score, but it is the first movement, not the Turkish rondo, which undergoes Say’s authentically Turkish treatment. Soysev’s wordless soprano and Biçer’s ney flute (a traditional Turkish instrument) play quasi-improvisational arioso lines over repetitive percussion patterns, while Say’s piano contributes textural washes in the upper register. The music is sparse: the first seven minutes or so hover exclusively around the open fifth of A and E, and the pace never varies over the work’s 26-minute duration. I can imagine this score forming an atmospheric accompaniment to a ballet, but regarding the composer’s suggestion that it is also suitable for concert performance, I beg to differ. Musical interest runs out well before the halfway mark.

The Violin Concerto (of which this is the premiere performance, taped live in 2008 in Lucerne) employs the same approach, although the work is much more varied. Three of the four movements establish a percussion riff, over which the soloist develops sinuous Turkish-flavored themes. The violin represents Sheherazade, linking the movements together in unaccompanied passages. (At one point it seems Say is about to quote Rimsky’s famous theme but thinks the better of it.) The third movement incorporates a traditional Turkish song, harmonized rather unexpectedly in a traditional Western 19th-century manner. The tune is subject to several variations, among them a climactic orchestral statement worthy of a Hollywood epic. This 30-minute Concerto contains attractive and even exciting passages, not least through the hypnotic quality of the percussion, but once again my overall feeling is that the intrinsic material has been stretched further than it deserves. The work is not as tightly argued as, for example, the 1967 Violin Concerto by an older Turkish composer, Ahmed Adnan Saygun. The comparison is interesting also because Saygun is a master of the orchestra, whereas Say gives them little to do.

Kopatchinskaja plays with fire and commitment, Say himself is a brilliant pianist, and the recording quality of the major works is excellent, so there is a lot to enjoy in this issue. Even so, I wish one of Say’s four piano concertos had been the discmate of the Violin Concerto, rather than the anodyne ballet and the other trifles.

 

CD-Review: Fazil Say - 1001 Nights in the Harem

Terry Robbins in www.Thewholenote.com (Toronto), May 2009: The Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say has achieved great success in both classical and jazz fields, with frequent concert hall and jazz festival appearances and a discography ranging from Bach to Stravinsky. As an accompanist, he toured with Maxim Vengerov in 2004, and in 2006 formed a duo partnership with the Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

His violin concerto was written for Kopatchinskaja, and this CD is a live recording of the world premiere performance in Lucerne in February 2008. It is a very accessible and extremely satisfying four-movement work, the title of which suggests that in this particular meeting of East and West the ‘East’ is going to be the dominant partner, as indeed it is. Turkish percussion instruments add colour to a rich and warm orchestral score full of sensuous oriental sonorities that reaches its peak in a wonderfully lyrical third movement.

Kopatchinskaja interprets the music superbly, with great support from Axelrod and the LSO. This is one concerto I’ll be playing over and over again.

Three other works by Say complete the disc. Patara, a quartet for soprano, ney flute, piano and percussion that was originally a ballet, and Alla turca Jazz, for piano, are both built on material from Mozart’s A major Piano Sonata K331, while Summertime Variations is Say’s third arrangement of the Gershwin song, here conceived as a dazzling solo piece suitable for use in both his classical and jazz appearances.

CD-Review: Fazil Say - 1001 Nights in the Harem 

Jeff Simon in The Buffalo News 21.4.2009: performed by pianist Say, violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, soprano Burcu Soysev, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Axelrod (Naive). As a composer, the remarkable 38-year-old Turkish pianist Fazil Say has virtually discovered the northernmost reach of splendid vulgarity into music that might still be considered acceptable for the classical concert hall. And if his violin concerto titled “1001 Nights in the Harem” doesn’t convince you, then the wordless soprano vocalise on “Patara Ballet” will do the trick. This is music unashamedly exotic and populist at the same time, full of Turkish rhythmic instruments, melodies both glorious and overwrought and altogether irresistible, if you ask me. It renders the more hidebound notions of good taste irrelevant.

 

CD-Review: Beethoven, Ravel, Bartók, Say. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin; Fazil Say, piano. (Naive V5146)

Laurence Wittes in Strings-Magazine (California USA), march 2009: The young and trendy duo of Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Turkish pianist Fazil Say rips deliriously into a highly enterprising program as if tomorrow were a chancy affair. It’s more than their hearts that they wear on their sleeves; they lay out their emotional guts in a dazzling display of virtuosity and breathtaking musical entertainment.

The performances are consistently unpredictable. At one moment in Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” sonata, Kopatchinskaja’s racing along, clipping eighth notes in a furious rush to the finish; at the next she’s finding aphrodisiacal sweetness in a simple, two-bar ritardando. Say follows a pounding accompaniment with a phrase of sudden elegance worthy of the slow movement of the “Emperor” Concerto. In Bartók’s six “Romanian Folk Dances,” Kopatchinskaja sometimes rips her pizzicati with destructive force, sometimes plucks lyrically with wonderfully expressive grace. Perhaps she doesn’t throw off Ravel’s pretty little Sonata with enough casual cool, but in Say’s 13-minute Violin Sonata, she captures all the magic of its moonlit beauty. She has several more projects in the pipeline; Say’s “1001 Nights in a Harem” violin concerto is one that I’m particularly looking forward to.

The sound, recorded at the German Radio in Cologne, throbs with the presence and color of both the piano and Kopatchinskaja’s 1834 Giovanni Francesco Pressenda. The liner notes consist of a marginally interesting Q&A and some great photographs of the artists.

CD-Review: The future belongs to her - Kopatchinskaja's tone has been shaped by generations of musicians and a continuum of composers.

Tobias Fischer on www.tokafi.com, 19.3.2009: Classical music is a peculiar discipline. Regardless of their tastes and preferences, most audiences tend to favour the established, the proven and the canonised. But no other genre matches its comparable mistrust, dislike and arrogance towards the achievements of coeval creative brains. How on earth Moldovan Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has managed to fit into this mood of suspicion and retro-nostalgia is anybody's guess. Her interests are eclectic, her passions diverse, her temperament is her compass and her grasp of history holistic. She enjoys improvisation, has turned into a cherished companion of open-minded composers and given fresh twists to the standard repertoire. Her private ticks and little idiosyncrasies have naturally branded her an outsider, even though she has decided to roam the fringes of the scene instead of staging a rebellion. During the agreeable years of the music industry, she refused to record a CD. Now, she debuts at a time when major companies are either disappearing into the digital domain or turning into mere administrators of a golden past. And a lot could have gone wrong.

A collaborational Effort:  For the better part of the past decade, Kopatchinskaja has, after all, made the stage her space for exploration and experimentation and for channeling the ideas of the most diverse composers to the public (her current repertoire for solo recitals doesn't only span a full three-hundred years, but includes names even initiated listeners will never have heard of). Every note she played was either captioned in the memory of her audience or lost forever in the airwaves of theatres and concert halls around the world. Victorious performances turned into newspaper snippets on her homepage - if you weren't there, you would never know about the magic of these moments. In itself, that is nothing new. Just like Jazz, Classical Music is performance-oriented. A printed score isn't worth a penny without the adequate artist to bring it to life. Or, as Turkish Pianist and Composer Fazil Fazil Say puts it in the booklet, „Patricia took my Violin Concerto further and found a special Violin sound for it. She has actually made the work better.“ As history has shown, this ability doesn't always translate to the recording situation. In the absence of that emotional suspense and subcutaneous excitement, many experienced Blues artists have faltered where, in a decrepit shack filled to the brim with spectators and beer-soaked tension, they would flourish.

If Kopatchinskaja hasn't lost her way, then maybe that is down to the fact that her studio premiere is, in fact, not a solo- but a collaborational effort. Because her communication with Say has mostly been non-verbal and marked by a shared grasp of the soul of their programs, their interaction is fueled by a positive, energetic tension by default. To genre-aficionados, this kind of approach must seem like a paradox. Knowledge is considered inferior to understanding here, the intellect is softly guided by intuition. Vague historic discussions are replaced by precise gestures, theories proven or dispelled by just „letting it rip“. Even if the disc was recorded over what were surely a myriad of takes and even if the end-result was, no doubt, subject to the same minute editing process as any other comparable CD, its roots firmly lie in the shared moments of playing in front of real and quite tangible audiences. With Say and Kopatchinskja, the album as a creative format returns to its original functionality: Providing a space to aim for a different perspective, for a new take or a challenge of what seemed self-evident, or simply to attain a particular form of perfection.

21st Century Artists: If the album indeed fulfills almost all of the above-mentioned aims, then this is because the duo isn't asking what these pieces may have been about at the time when they were written, but what they mean to them in this very instant as 21st century artists. „How important is contemporary music to you?“, Manuel Brug asks in an interview included in the booklet, but you only need to listen to a few bars of Beethoven's „Kreutzer Sonata“ to know that Kopatchinskaja's tone has been shaped by generations of musicians and a continuum dating back far longer than any of the composers included here. It is an inquisitive tone, a brittle, open and organic sound enriched by sensual traces of the microscopic impurities of the strings her bow is scanning like the grooves of a Vinyl record. It appears from silence and returns to it, leaving streaks of harmonics on the canvas. It can be lyrical or demure, romantic or realistic, euphoric or pan-demonic and sometimes it will start out as one of these and run through different emotional states before returning to its beginning. It is infinitely sensitive, asking questions instead of making definitive statements. And yet it is never indecisive. This tone may seem fragile, but it penetrates the fabric of truth like a sharp needle.

Kopatchinskaja is not trying to put down lofi-versions of these pieces compared to the glossy productions of some of her colleagues though. Rather, she consciously drops all associations and notions of what a piece stands for in the moment of playing it. If you find yourself marveling at her renditions, replete with surprising twists and unique strokes, then that is probably because she seems quite surprised herself. Her interpretations are purifying processes of wilfully forgetting herself. Which is also why she eschews hollow virtuosity and keeps defying even the most generally accepted notions. I tend to disagree with Say's above-mentioned statement in the sense that, by default, a performer can not make a work as such better or worse. But what Kopatchinskaja is doing here truly does come close to composing: She is questioning and recreating the work from within, extending its reach and replenishing its potential. It doesn't matter whether Beethoven would have enjoyed her performance or not. What does, however, is that one can't help but feel that he would have smiled upon hearing it.

An even more astounding Ravel: Even though medial attention has focussed on the „Kreutzer“, the Ravel Violin Sonata she and Say have recorded is even more astounding, taking the piece firmly into the new millennium, breathtakingly balancing between chunky dissonance, sound art and poetic debauchery. In Bartok's „Romanian Folk Dances“, they destroy the usual display of picture-postcard-passion, replacing it with a sound that smells of earth, tears and desire. And Say's own contribution to the program is haunted by hints at jazzy Upright-Bass lines and bewildering mood swings. It is a combination that doesn't seem as though it might work on paper, but makes complete sense in practise.

As always, of course, there was the danger of being misunderstood. Already, some have referred to Kopatchinskaja's „Kreutzer“ as „brusque“, while Germany's biggest magazine on classical music, possibly impressed by the popular impact of the CD, referred to her as a „Violin Girlie“. And if a lot of newspapers are now praising the wayward nature of the album, then that won't keep radio stations from gleefully ignoring it and most listeners from going for a safer choice when visiting their local record store. But the most important thing is that, against all odds, Kopatchinskaja has gone ahead and realised her vision. It is a courageous effort, an inspiring interpretation and an extended hand both towards the new-music-apostles and the traditionalists. A lot could have gone wrong. After listening to her first official record, however, it is hard not to believe that the future belongs to her.

CD-Review: Kopatchinskaja Plays Beethoven, Ravel, Bartók & Say

Mike D. Brownell on the All-Music-Blog www.allmusic.com Jan 2009: With a repertoire heavily centered on twentieth and twenty first century composers, Patricia Kopatchinskaja definitely does not play your grandmother's Beethoven. Actually, the first-movement Presto of her performance of the Op. 47 sonata is downright startling at first. Extremely aggressive and energetic, Kopatchinskaja's playing lives up to her stated desire to perform Beethoven in a more "excessive manner." Despite the initially jarring verticality of her playing, the spontaneity and excitement that she brings to the "Kreutzer" Sonata is quickly engaging and infectious. The remainder of the program is more in line with Kopatchinskaja's affinity for twentieth century works: Ravel's G major Sonata, Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances, and Fazil Say's Op. 7 Sonata. This far-reaching program is greatly enhanced by Kopatchinskaja's brilliant technique, near-flawless intonation, crystal-clear tone, impressive dynamic palate, and keen sense of pacing. Her musical understanding of the scores at hand is profound and instantly captures the listener's interest and attention, holding it for the duration of the album. Dialogue between Kopatchinskaja and pianist (and composer) Fazil Say is equally engaging and dynamic, filled with controlled spontaneity. Naïve's sound is wonderfully clear and well-balanced. This is absolutely an album worth considering for listeners in the market for some intense, take-no-prisoners playing.

CD-review: Violin Works: Beethoven, Ravel, etc. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin; Fazil Say, piano (Naive).  FOUR STARS

Bradley Bambarger on Star-Ledger and www.nj.com 12.1.2009: Fazil Say, a 38-year-old solo pianist-composer born in Turkey, has earned a maverick reputation, the jazz-loving Parisian garnering both huzzahs and hoots from critics. He has formed an empathetic duo with a younger violin virtuoso whose doe eyes mask an experimental edge -- Patricia Kopatchinskaja, from Moldova. They strike sparks on this live-wire recital disc. Their audaciously wide dynamic range in Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata makes the totemic score sound fresh; their earthy, dancing approach in Bartok's "Romanian Folk Dances" is surely what the composer desired.

The pair delves into the Jazz Age vibe of Ravel's Violin Sonata with idiosyncratic panache, as Kopatchinskaja keens and Say plonks a "prepared" piano to give the "Blues" movement a honky-tonk air. Say recorded his whirling dervish of a Violin Sonata first with the excellent Laurent Korcia, but Kopatchinskaja inhabits the melancholy parts with equal soul and plays the "perpetual motion" centerpiece with more abandon. This is the rare studio disc that has all the hot-blooded excitement of the best concerts.

 

Unusual and personal spontaneity

David Denton in The STRAD, January 2009: Patricia Kopatchinskaja, making her CD debut, was born in Moldovia and musically educated in Vienna and Bern  Winner of the Henryk Szeryng competition in 2000, she represented Austria in the "rising stars" concert series on both sides of the Atlantic, and has since appeared with many of the worlds leading orchestras. 

After the introspective opening bars of the "Kreutzer" Sonata Kopatchinskaja drives headlong through the opening movement, as if just discovering a masterpiece she is anxious to convey Even in the central movements variations the tempos are alway urgent, and the final Presto is a musical whirlwind. Pieces are shaped with an often unusual and personal spontaneity, and, if at times the playing is a little rough around the edges with wayward intonation in the fast central variation, I would want this vital perforamance for those days when a shot of musical adrenalin is needed.

Her Ravel Sonata is more conventional, and though she revels in the mercurial brialliance of the finale, she never commands the vast range of colours found in the Vadim Repin - Boris Berezovsky recording (Erato). I do enjoy her Romanian Dances, where the rustic mood is infused with happyness.

Fazil Say's Sonata of 1996 is basically tonal, but spiced with commercial modernity of the late 20th century. It is in five movements with descriptive titles, and is an immediatly likeable piece, with Say's superb accompaniment giving it a performing benchmark status. The sound quality is very good.      

 

Radical, individual and exciting takes on sonatas old and new (CD Naive V5146)

Duncan Druce in Gramophone Magazine, January 2009: This is far from being just another recording of the Kreutzer Sonata. Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say share a radical approach, performing each musical gesture in the most vivid way, with smoothness and tonal beauty a secondary consideration. It's undeniably exciting, especially in the first movement which, after all, is quite a wild piece, but even here I was disturbed by the exaggerated shortness of many staccato notes. And in the finale, which though it shares something of the first Presto's manic quality has a joyful aspect, Kopatchinskaja's ultra-short, rather splashy bowing of both main themes fails to project their full melodic elan.

Like Beethoven, the Bartok is a slightly frustrating misture of the brilliant and the questionable., but in the Ravel the performance's radical edge is more completely successful. The first movements out-of-key interjections are sharply characterised and drawn together by a powerful sense of line and the spirit of the Blues movement is captured wholeheartedly, with some unusual piano sounds and spectacular violin playing. Not surprisingly, Say's own Sonata is also beautifully played. Most imaginatively written for the two instruments and adopting a direct, uncomplicated style, four short movements chart a progression from romantic melancholy through an area of dark, grostesque struggle to an empty bleak landscape, with a repeat of the gentle first movement as consolation. Daring, and highly individual playing - it's a CD worth investigating.

 

New musical goldmine for Turkey 

Alexandra Ivanoff in Andante Music Magazine (Istanbul) 1/2009: ...The centerpiece of the evening, Say's "Harem'de 1001 Gece", which has already enjoyed premieres in Japan and Europe, received its first hearing in the homeland to which it is dedicated. A highly descriptive and programmatic tone poem, it evoked exotic evenings at the Harem (probably Topkapi Saray), complete with bird sounds, folk drums, confusion and chaos in the labyrinth, and the famous tune "Üsküdar'a giderken", all of which employed a gorgeous orchestration that tipped its hat to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Sheherazade" and Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". Axelrod's podium control perfectly piloted the percussive engine and enormous sonic scope the composer gave him to master.

At the center of the centerpiece was the extraordinary Patricia Kopatchinskaja, a violinist whose uniqueness lies not only in her affinity for improvisatory interpretations, but her fondness for appearing barefoot on the concert stage in the middle of winter. Notwithstanding also her bright red gown with an asymmetrical zipper up the front, she belied her youthful appearance with a musical maturity and unexpected zest of delivery that perfectly matched Say's clowning and Axelrod's expansive energy. She employed sweet tone and fabulous lyricism in addition to all kinds of experimental sounds (like knocking on the instrument), practically dancing her way through her masterful rendition of the rhythmically challenging score.

Finally, in an unusual programming decision for an orchestra concert, the trio of Kopatchinskaja, Say, and Axelrod as page-turner, came out to perform Say's "Sonata for Violin and Piano", Opus 7, written in 1997. The five movement sonata is a sublime and fascinating work, using pointillism, whole-tone scales, surrealism, Turkish folk references, and jazz to seduce the ear. It's a hugely expressive, impassioned and athletic duet that covered a wide musical territory.

The audience members were charmed out of their seats to demand more from this sparkling trio, and they proceeded to give more: humorous improvisations that ended with a boogie-woogie version of Beethoven's "Für Elise". As if it couldn't get any more fun, the trio allowed their respective young daughters to take a bow with their parents - undoubtedly a show-biz goldmine in Turkey.

 

CD-Review: Kopatchinskaja/Say -Beethoven etc (Naive V5146) 

Gavin Engelbrecht in The Northern Echo (U.K.), 18.12.2008: Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and pianist Fazil Say give a dazzling account of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No 9 “Kreutzer”. The couple’s take on Ravel’s Violin sonata in G major is edgy and accomplished. The album is rounded off with Say’s own violin sonata, brilliantly played by the composer.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin / Fazil Say, piano / Naïve
Sonatas by Beethoven (‘Kreutzer’), Ravel, Say: Bartók: Romanian Dances

Jay Batzner on www.sequenza21.com, 29.10.2008: I must confess that I didn’t plan on reviewing this disc. I get several discs to review that, to quote Steve Hicken, “don’t really fit in with S21’s mission. This is usually because of genre or because the music isn’t recent enough.” I saw this disc and thought “Beethoven, Ravel, and Bartók aren’t exactly ‘new.’ The Say might be interesting, but is the whole disc worth reviewing for one piece?” In a word, no. The whole disc is not worth reviewing for one piece. The disc is worth reviewing because the performances of all these pieces are absolutely amazing. The Say sonata is an excellent work, to boot.

Kopatchinskaja’s violin sound is icy and cool, almost fragile sounding, with nimble technique. The opening gestures of the Beethoven are strikingly thin and delicate. There is plenty of power, though, as Kopatchinskaja will later demonstrate. Kopatchinskaja maintains a dry and textured tone while gracefully bouncing around the demands of the Beethoven and Ravel (the Perpetuum mobile of which is absolutely delightful). The first strains of the Bartók sound almost like a totally different violinist. The texture of her sound is still there, but so is a rich earthiness which wasn’t present in the Beethoven or Ravel. I love both of her sounds equally, but the glassy and cool is much more pronounced on this CD.

Fazil Say’s piano work is equally powerful and sensitive. His Violin Sonata is an engaging, Impressionist-influenced, colorful work with luscious melodies and harmonies. Each of Say’s five movements (Melancholy, Grotesque, Perpetuum mobile, Anonymous, and Melancholy) traverse excellent internal trajectories as well as maintain a cyclic large-scale arch structure. The Anonymous movement is gorgeous with its haunting violin melody and later muted piano plunking. Kopatchinskaja soars about as much as she scrambles in this piece. There is a great sense of communal music making on this whole CD and especially on this particular disc.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say in Istanbul

Alen Matalon on http://www.musicweb-international.com: The warm but breezy evening weather in Istanbul (27.6.2008) was an ideal complement to ENKA Auditorium, a beautiful open air performance space, not originally intended for classical music concerts due to its poor acoustics and proneness to noise from the nearby highway, not to mention a shooting range a few hundred yards away. The external noise grew from bad to worse unfortunately, thanks to high-decibel pop music coming from the nightclub within the same complex, followed by actual shooting noises from the range. It is safe to assume that except for a selected few seated around the piano close to the action — myself included — the rest of the audience must have suffered from this terrible distraction. Such a shame, because the concert featuring the acclaimed pianist Fazil Say and talented violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja was a big success.

This was the second evening of the ENKA Summer Arts Festival, a repeat of the program from the night before. It was a pleasant surprise to see a Bosendorfer Grand placed on the stage. I was a little worried too at the same time, since Say is not known for his light touch which seems to go best with this marvellous  instrument. Thankfully, my qualms disappeared shortly after they got into the Kreutzer Sonata. The first movement, Adagio sostenuto, started with Say’s stout playing, resulting in a muddy violin sound from Kopatachinskaja. However, he adjusted his touch to the delicacies of the piece soon after, providing sufficient sonic interval for his companion to make herself heard. With the arrival of the presto section of the movement, Ms. Kopatchinskaja’s technical abilities began to show as she stormed through the end of the movement confidently. The following variations were a mixed bag. In the dance-like rhythmic sections the duo worked in perfect unison. In contrast, during the Mozartian, more elegant variations, the melodic transitions which call for subtle adjustments were often neglected by the violin. Say’s perfect octaves were the saving grace here. The final movement with its fast and commanding lines assured me that this concert was sure to get better in the Ravel and Bartok pieces to follow.  It should be noted here that both players were extremely animated. Fazil Say, already known for his energetic way of playing, met his match in Koptatchinskaja’s lenient body language. She moved quite a lot, coming dangerously close to the piano at times. The first half of the concert ended after only this one piece.

With the start of the second half came the best part of the evening. Ravel's sonata—mysterious and ethereal —was executed with almost no faults at all. Special mention should go to Mr. Say for providing the audience with perfect accompaniment duties during the Allegretto. The smoky Blues movement was definitely the highlight of the program. The two players worked in perfect harmony here with Say producing unusually bright sounds from the Bosendorfer while Kopatchinskaja hit all the notes in exact timing and in apposite dynamic levels. She went further showing off her technical abilities in the extremely difficult Perpetuum mobile. She mesmerized the audience with her virtuosity, ending the piece with punch and a well-deserved applause. A nice visual effect was a butterfly coming out of nowhere and flying —at least one instance in which the concert benefitted from taking place in open air.

Bartok’s Roumanian Dances, originally scored for orchestra, was played in its reduced form arranged by Zoltán Székely. I thought it was a risky work to choose, both because of its unfamiliarity with the general audience (remember that Say’s own sonata—a virtually unknown piece—was to follow) and its short duration. The six dances took no more than that many minutes, but nevertheless it quickly became the audience favorite thus far, thanks to its folkloric themes that are reminiscent of Turkish traditional melodies. It had its moments of technical difficulties, but with musicians of this caliber it went very smoothly.

The ending work for the evening, Fazil Say’s own sonata for violin and piano written in 1997, was a complete unknown for me. I was familiar with only one of his compositions: The Nazim Hikmet Ran oratorio for piano, soloists, chorus and orchestra. That piece, full of traditional melodies was simple enough. This sonata, however, could not be further from that. The opening movement called Melancholy is mostly scored for the piano. The music is basically a gloomy melody over elongated arpeggios, followed by fast trills that are echoed in the violin. Say worked his fingers to the extreme to realize his own score to a very nice effect. The following movement, named Grotesque, might be the reason for the existence of the Bosendorfer on stage, since there are plenty of notes that call for this piano’s additional low register. After these two movements, came the third one: Perpetuum mobile assigning the leading role to the violin. Kopatchinskaja, once again, played with extreme vigor, making this seemingly impossible score sound like child’s play. The dynamic action was seemingly there just for the effect beyond which there was not much musical substance. The fourth movement, also dependent on the piano, was interesting in that a traditional Turkish melody was scored over dissonant motifs. Of special interest was the plucking of the strings by Mr. Say to give the piano the effect of an "ud" (a traditional Middle-Eastern string instrument). The final movement was a welcome return to the opening, and in my opinion the most successful part. This piece went very well with the crowd, resulting in enthusiastic applause for encores to which the musicians happily obliged.

I am oblivious to the names and the origins of the initial encores, the first being short, energetic and technically demanding, and the second, an entertaining solo violin interlude in which Ms. Kopatchinskaja vocalized while playing. The final encore was Mr. Say’s own jazz arrangement of Mozart’s "Turkish Rondo" from his Piano Sonata No.11, in A Major, K. 331. This well known arrangement pushed the crowd to their feet, ending the evening on a very positive note.

 

Inexhaustible energy

Michael Dervan, Irish Times, 8.7.2008...The surprise audience success of the Fourth of July programme of American violin sonatas was the outrageously derivative (Stravinsky could surely have sued for breach of copyright), crude, but overwhelmingly entertaining First Violin Sonata of 1923 by George Antheil, played with inexhaustible energy by Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin) and Hiroaki Ooi (piano).

 

Spectacular violinist 

Anna McAlister in Herald Sun (Melbourne) 13.7.2007: It helps to be flamboyant if you are going to lead an orchestra from the violin. But "charismatic" grossly understates the Australian Chamber Orchestra's  guest leader, Moldavian-born Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who danced spontaneously and performed barefoot (shoes could have been a noisy hazard).

Among the drama and animation, she inspired the ACO with a contagious enthusiasm that did not sacrifice clarity. That's because Kopatchinskaja is not just a stage person. She is also a spectacular violinist.

Inexplicably the concert began with Gideon Klein's Partita, one of many works of art from the Nazi's Terezin camp. ACO did not entirely respond to Kopatchinskaja's energy in this stodgy, grey piece, saving themselves for Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto Funebre (1939).

Beginning with a three note chorale that is engaging in its naked softness, funebre's solo violin line is like a talking voice recalling grief and anger. Kopatchinskaja alternated a thin, sweet sound with warmth and pain, often within a bow stroke.

The encore was Jorge Sanchez Chiong's Crin, a violin solo full of vocal utterances just like the squeaks, bumps and glissandi played on the violin. This hilarious and slightly insane feat of coordination could be carried off only by someone with as much acting as musical talent: Kopatchinskaja. 

 

Barefooted soloist and walking musician wow audience

Neville Cohn, West Australian (Perth), 13.7.2007: Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja disdains the use of shoes on stage. A tiny, black-garbed figure, she played bare feet, her toes occasionally tapping the one or other of the exotic rhythmic patterns that informed her playing. She spent much stage time bobbing and weaving, crouching and rocking, even leaping and lurching as she played her fine Pressenda violin in a way that left no doubt about her prodigious command of the instrument.

A fascinating compilation included "Per Australia" written by Kopatchinskaja specially for the Australian chamber Orchestra's current national tour. This curious piece begins with musicians coming on stage while playing their instruments. Have you ever seen anyone playing a cello while walking? It looks jolly uncomfortable. It is a piece dominated by the simulated sounds of wildlife, with glissandi up and down fingerboards mimicking avian warbles and trills in ensemble with a miscellany of clicks, creaks and rasps that one doesn't normally associate with a classical string orchestra.

Gideon Klein isn't a name well known to concertgoers. Murdered in a nazi concentration camp at the age of only 26, Klein left a small but precious musical legacy including the Partita, a transcription of a string trio that Klein completed only days before being transported to Auschwitz. The opening Allegro has about it a sunny optimism, a jovial bustle that gives no hint of the threatening environment in which it was written. Much of the slow movement is the quintessence of melancholy, the finale a marvel of offbeat rhythmic patterns.

Karl Hartmanns Concerto Funebre, a violin concerto in which Kopatchinskaja drew from a deep well of expressiveness, is music of a very different sort. Hartmann, an Aryan German who detested the Nazis, would not allow his music to be performed in Germany while Hitler was in power. His 1939 Concerto Funebre was smuggled into Switzerland and given its premiere there. 

Kopatchinskaja gave a superb account of the solo part, much of it the distillation of pain. The orchestra provided an immaculate accompaniment for her with the players afterwards joining in waves of applause for the soloist.

In Rossinis Sting sonata Nr. 3 and Vivaldi's concerto in D-minor Kopatchinskaja demonstrated the virtuosity that has propelled her to international celebrity. Also on the bill was Bartok's ubiquitious Rumanian Dances which, unsurprisingly brought the house down.

 

Exemplary playing

Fred Blanks, North Shore Times (Sidney), 13.7.2007: Intensely emotional, both visually and musically was young Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja as guest director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra last week. Her playing in the alternately elegiac and angry Concerto funebre (1939) by Karl Amadeus Hartmann (anti-Nazi German who remained in Munich throughout the Third Reich) and the spicy slavic Partita by Gideon Klein (holocaust victim in 1945) was exemplary.

 

Hope – Australian Chamber Orchestra - Perth Concert Hall, Western Australia   

William Yeoman on www.classicalsource.com, July 11 2007: Wilfully eccentric or eccentrically wilful – however you might categorise Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s persona, there’s no getting around her astonishing musicianship. In this latest tour by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the diminutive Kopatchinskaja, 1834 Pressenda violin tucked under her chin, danced barefoot between ensemble and audience like a benign goblin, whipping up a magical storm in a programme of sharply contrasting works.

The Partita is an arrangement for string orchestra of a string trio by Gideon Klein (1919-1945), who, like so many gifted artists and intellectuals, met his death in a Nazi concentration camp. The trio was Klein’s final composition, but one listens in vain for even the merest intimation of mortality. This vigorous, energetic work is thoroughly life-affirming, and was given an appropriately vigorous performance, Kopatchinskaja and the ACO moulding the contrasting rhythms and broad, melodic outlines with great conviction.

Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s four-movement Concerto funèbre was played with equal conviction. This time the spotlight was firmly on Kopatchinskaja, who put her almost supernatural command of harmonics, extremes of register, rapid bowing and articulation firmly at the service of the music. The ACO was equally immersed in Hartmann’s often-mysterious soundworld, the dynamic control and near-perfect ensemble a wonder to behold.

In many ways, Bartók’s Romanian Dances brought a return to the mood of the Klein, making the Hartmann feel like the central movement of some vast concerto. Contributing to this impression was the rustic, improvisatory quality in the playing – so apposite for the folk origins of this music.

The second half opened with Kopatchinskaja’s own Per Australia. Written in celebration of her first visit to this country and as a tribute to the ACO, it uses a multitude of effects (including the novel use of a harpsichord and vocalisations from the musicians) to paint an imaginary picture of a country Kopatchinskaja had not yet seen. The result is a playful yet highly controlled cacophony that has much in common with the paintings of Australian artist Fred Williams. Both musicians and audience seemed delighted with it.

Then came one of Rossini’s string sonatas and classic ACO: punchy, incisive playing and a real feeling for balance and texture. It made an ideal introduction to Kopatchinskaja’s pyrotechnics in the Vivaldi. Not only in the outer-movement cadenzas, but also in the profusely ornamented middle movement (in which the only accompaniment was cello and harpsichord), Kopatchinskaja added to the aforementioned qualities in her musical arsenal an exquisite sense of fantasy and invention. Here was playing worthy to stand alongside that of Fabio Biondi or Giuliano Carmignola.

 

Humour in a mixed program

Clive O'Conell, The Age (Melbourne), 8.7.2007: Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has made her Australian debut fronting the Australian chamber Orchestrra for its latest subscription series concerts.

The orchestra's atristic director Richard Togenetti is occupied in Italy. Kopatchinskaja took his position at the leader's desk throughout the program, except when she played the central role. Sunday afternoon's entertainment began with a 20th-century bracket, then moved after interval from the newly composed back to Rossini, then further back to Vivaldi. Not that you should object simply to variety in a program, but the final impact was of short weight and unfocused scrappyness.

The ACO's strings began with a Partita, arranged from an original string trio written by Gideon Klein, a Jewish Czech musician. The work owes much to central European folk music and the spectre of Janacek looms, but the piece stands on his own feet.

Kopatchinskaja then played the solo line for Hartmann's Concerto funebre, a sterling sample of the German composer's expressiveness that gives a wealth of material to the solo violin.

The popular Romanian Dances of Bartok and Rossini's String Sonata No. 3 in C Major crossed into a semi-popular idiom, the first given musing treatment, with the soloist distinguishing herself in the third of them that showed her skill in managing harmonics and her sense of musical humour. In Rossinis brief product from his young age, the surface gloss associated with the ACO was not as highly buffed as usual, some local supernumeraries having been slotted into the ensemble's violins to make up numbers.

Kopatchinskaja's own Per Australia, written for this tour, was a brief frolic with lots of vocal elements including kookaburra calls.

In the Vivaldi D Major Concerto, Il grosso mogul , the guest director played to the gallery through an exciting display of technique, her ornamentation fairly trowelled on in a bracing and idiosyncratic interpretation that revealed the visitor's relish for the limelight as well as her ability to stand up to it's scrutiny.

 

Light after the darkness 

Steve Moffatt in The Manly Daily (Australia), July 6, 2007:  This concert in the Sidney City Recital Hall, which marked the Australian debut of exciting 30-year-old Moldavian violinist and composer Patricia Kopatchinskaya, was branded Hope, which although it springs eternal has its dark side as well.

This was more than adequately catered for in the first half with two early 20th century works, neither of which I had heard before.

The Jewish Czech composer Gideon Klein composed his Partita in Terezin concentration camp, completing it just days before he was sent to Auschwitz and then on to his eventual death at Furstengrubbe camp in 1945. Despite Klein's dreadful circumstances this music has a springy, folksy feel in its two outer movements, owing much to the composer's hero, Janacek. The slow middle movement, far from being a despairing threnody, is melancholic but in a dreamlike way.

Not so the Concerto funebre by German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann who wrote it in 1939 as an angry reaction to Hitler's invasion of Prague. The manuscript was smuggled to Switzerland where it was published.Hartmann, a student of Webern and admirer of Hindemith, faced the awful dilemma of many non-Jewish German artists of that time - whether to flee the Nazis or stay. Describing himself as ``an internal immigrant'' he chose to work on in Munich, expressing his opposition through his music. This concerto with its furious double stopping passages and exploitation of the violin's full range showed off Kopatchinskaja's prodigious virtuosity and character as she crouched and hopped barefoot in the middle of the stage.

Perhaps less gripping, though impressive enough, was the second ``lighter'' half with an early Rossini Sonate a quattro and Vivaldi's Grand Mogul concerto following a short and quirky piece written by Kopatchinskaja as a tribute to Australia and featuring bird calls and the cries of animals.

At times she was a little wayward in the Vivaldi, but injected the cadenzas with a harum-scarum excitement that delighted the audience.

A musician who emphasises the importance of live performance, Kopatchinskaja is a remarkable talent and it was obvious that the Australian Chamber Orchestra, co-directed by Helena Rathbone for the night, enjoyed this collaboration as much as the audience did.

 

An exposé of contrasts in an ambitious balancing act

Peter McCallum in The Sidney Morning Herald, July 2, 2007: Gideon Klein's Partita is an unpretentious work in the central European folk-song style established by Janacek and hardened by Bartok. The visiting violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja led its spiky first movement with impulsive alertness, crouching and releasing energy like a coiled spring while somehow still managing to get the bow to the string at the right time.

The second movement, a set of variations on a slow folk-like theme, was a succession of highly contrasted cameos, beautifully played while the finale, another fast movement, begins with a reference to Beethoven's last String Quartet, Opus 135. Was this deliberate or coincidence?

We will never know because Klein, a Czechoslovakian Jew, wrote it in the Theresienstadt concentration camp before being moved to Auschwitz and then Furstengrubbe, where he perished months before the end of World War II.

The program was entitled Hope but the next piece didn't exactly supply it in spades. Written in 1939 as a protest against Hitler's occupation of Klein's country, Karl Hartmann's Concerto Funebre began with a folk-like violin melody that Kopatchinskaja played with a drained white sound moving seamlessly into the next movement which rose to a high scream. In the demonic third movement Kopatchinskaja's playing was as one possessed, while the finale returns to the chorale mood of the opening.

From here on, hope started to look more like retreat, first to Bartok's Roumanian Dances of 1915, played with refreshingly straightforward fullness, and then in the second half to Kopatchinskaja's Per Australia, a playfully anarchic piece written for this tour. Starting from silent bow movements as the players walked on, it progressed to whispy scrapes, knocks and whistles and a short dingo imitation. Written in the spirit of John Cage, the work tapped into the imaginative irrationality of the post-Stalin generation of Eastern Bloc composers though Kopatchinskaja's voice as a composer is relatively unformed.

Then it was not so much retreat as escape, first into Rossini's Sonata a Quattro No. 3 and then Vivaldi's Concerto in D, RV 208, which Kopatchinskaja played with the furious energy of a country fiddler.

The performance's mad imagination sometimes knocked itself from its point of equilibrium and the patchiness suggested that it is not only important to have ideas, it is also sometimes important to discard them.

Soloist with all-round dexterity

Murray Black, The Australian (Sidney), July 2, 2007: Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who is making her Australian debut on this Australian Chamber Orchestra tour, is an extraordinary performer. But not in the way one might expect.

Many star soloists love to show off their talents in displays of flamboyant showmanship. With Kopatchinskaja, though, the focus is firmly on the music and her fellow musicians. However, this doesn't mean she is a tentative introvert. On the contrary, an impish physicality dominates her onstage presence. She seems completely consumed by the music, swaying around and hunching over her instrument as if trying to wring every last drop of emotion from it.

Kopatchinskaja is not bound by tradition, either. As a soloist, she plays from the score, citing the need to have the music before her to get full experimental freedom. It obviously works because she executes virtuosic challenges with spectacular ease and unblemished tonal lustre.

In Hartmann's Concerto funebre for violin and strings, Kopatchinskaja's tonal variety and control was remarkable as she seamlessly exchanged a thin, hard-edged timbre in softer passages with a richer, full-bodied sound elsewhere.

Daredevil brilliance came to the fore in the Violin Concerto Il grosso mogul by Vivaldi. Kopatchinskaja threw off the leaping figurations and scurrying sequences with scintillating dexterity which, when combined with lightning fast speeds and bold contrasts, created a thrillingly dramatic account.

As a director, Kopatchinskaja sustained her inward-looking focus, practically turning her back to the audience so she could concentrate on the orchestra. She was very much in charge, with the rest of the ensemble intently responsive to her every move and gesture.

What resulted were interpretations of imaginative freedom. The bristling energy in the outer movements of Gideon Klein's Partita enclosed a lento of lyrical warmth and soulful yearning.

In Bartok's Rumanian Dances, the orchestra's tightly interwoven sonorities and punchy attack realised their harmonic sophistication, rhythmic zest and earthy humour. By contrast, the third string sonata by Rossini enjoyed a performance of sparkling elegance due to refined, shapely phrasing and superb clarity of articulation.

The only false note in the concert was struck by the world premiere performance of Kopatchinskaja's Per Australia, written for this tour. The repeated use of a wide range of clever sound effects wore thin very quickly, especially when the players began vocalising and singing. Incoherent and rambling, this was music of insubstantial gesture and empty rhetoric.

West Cork Chamber Music Festival 2005

Michael Dervan in Irish Times, 27.6.2005: ...Kopatchinskaja is another musician, who can be expected to take a fresh slant on whatever she plays. Her approach to the Bartok (Second violin sonata with Mihaela Ursuleasa) was febrile, her hair-trigger responses charting the musics darting, weaving course with sharp outlines. Ursuleasas equally quick responses contributed to an account that was unusually bracingly brittle in its effect.

Michael Dervan in Irish Times, 28.6.2005: ...But the performance of the day was the extraordinary account of George Enescu's Impressions d'enfance for violin and piano by Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Mihaela Ursuleasa. This was so sharply characterised and so highly individual, especially in its treatment of its gypsy evocations, as to guarantee controversies. Enescu's musical pictorialism offers a strange mixture of innocence and experience which this performance captured to perfection.

Michael Dervan in Irish Times, 29.6.2005: ...Firsova, a Russian who has been living in Britain since the early 1990s, has written a straightforward, romantically expressionist lament, composed after the death of her mother, to whose memory it is dedicated. Mondays premiere by Patricia Kopatchinskaja took it from barely audible keening whispers to jarring explosions with all that precision of gesture and individuality of character which make her playing so special...

Michael Dervan in Irish Times, 30.6.2005: ...Patricia Kopatchinskaja is an instrumentalist with, in instrumental terms, the technical variety of a Zavalloni and the desire to use it at every twist and turn. She made a great effect in Alan Ridouts telling of Ferdinand the bull for violin and narrator (Zavalloni), but made heavy weather of key moments in Beethovens sonata in G, op 30 No. 3 with pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa. She was neat and to the point in Dinicu's Hora staccato but went way, way over the top in hyping the gypsy flavor of Ravel's Tzigane and hamming up John Cage's Variations I...

André Jute in Irish Examiner, 2.7.2005: "PRICHET is a Russian traditional lament on the occasion of death" says Russian composer Elena Firsova (b 1950) whose Prichet for solo violin op. 112 received its world premiere in Bantry on Monday by the Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Kopatchinskaja is an adventurous and versatile violinist. The young performer skilfully faded away to leave only the image of pain. Firsova's composition is a true lament, a keening violin, but the fashionable plucked strings interfere with coherence.

 

With the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, Ireland

Michael Dervan in Irish Times, 24.1.2005: Many years ago, in an old periodical, I came across an article lamenting the homogeneity of tone and style in modern violin playing. The older generation of players, the writer argued, had been altogether more strongly differentiated from each other than players of the then current generation of Heifetz and Menuhin. The writer would surely have been appalled if he lived to hear how and for how long homogenisation took hold. But he might well have become heartened by the reclamation of distinctive gesture that has taken place more recently.

The young Moldovan player, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who made her first appearance with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra on Friday, is a case in point. She's one of those musicians who's decided to take the vocabulary of sound and expression opened up by composers in the 20th century and exploit it as a resource when working on the standard repertoire. Her tone is free and full, her responses to the music she plays are minutely detailed, and at the same time she gives the impression of a kind of spontaneity that's rare on the concert platform.

On Friday, however, she didn't manage to convince that the fourth of Mozart's five violin concertos is the sort of work that really benefits from the kind of attention she bestowed on it. The far-out fantasy of her chosen cadenzas - Mozart rolled over by the 20th-century avant-garde -may have come as a shock to the system, but it did have a clear connection with her broader interpretative approach.

The bells, whistles and pirouettes of the contemporary encore she offered (whose name I didn't manage to catch*) proved a more apt, and thoroughly crowd-pleasing vehicle for her talent.

*The encore was Otto Zykan's "Das mit der Stimme" for singing violinist, written 2002 for P.K. 

 

Salzburg Festival Roundup

Edward Greenfiled, The Guardian (London), 1.8.2004: ...There was a similar relaxed feel at an earlier recital by Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Accompanied by the Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa, she followed up a passionate account of Wilhelm Furtwängler's Violin Sonata no 2 of with John Cage's dotty five-minute piece, Variations 1. After a sequence of false endings, Kopatchinskaya started eating an apple and went on to inflate a balloon, lying on the floor. All great fun, particularly after Furtwangler's effortful platitudes.

Cat & Mouse

Adam Baer in The New York Sun, 1.12.2003: The most exhilarating violin-and piano recital of 2003 didn’t open the fall season. It didn’t take place at Carnegie Hall, and it didn’t include anyone named Gidon or Mitsuko. It happened in a half-full room (and with a considerable lack of ceremony) on Friday at Bargemusic, the intimate performance space that floats under the Brooklyn Bridge. The stars were the mercurial 26-year-old Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and her accompanist, the 25-year-old Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa.

Despite contracts with an elite German arts-management firm, Konzertdirektion Hans Ulrich Schmid, these two talented extremists have yet to register on this country’s musical radar. Many music lovers likely to enjoy them are totally unaware of their existence; I suspect many other critics and presenters are in the same boat.

Both appeared on Friday courtesy of a mindful invite from Bargemusic director Mark Peskanov, who in 2000 had judged Ms. Kopatchinskaja the winner of the cutthroat Henryk Szeryng violin competition. The program was creatively rich, combining Bartók’s Romanian Dances, Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz,” George Enescu’s Third Violin Sonata, a work by Austrian avant-gardist Otto Zykan, and John Cage’s entropic “Variations I.” On display was a blend of sagacious youth, comedic cat-and-mouse improvisation, and concentrated bursts of hotblooded passion.

I learned about Ms. Kopatchinskaja just last week, when the cherubic pixie (*) with the dark, electrifying sound appeared at Leon Botstein’s American Symphony Orchestra concert at Avery Fisher Hall. In a smaller setting, the violinist’s sound was even more alive and more impeccably honed. Most violinists sound scratchy or strident up close; Ms. Kopatchinskaja sounded richer and more versatile — wonderfully temperamental. Her highly varied vibrato shakes wildly at times from the wrist but she controls her sound’s projection carefully with smaller, tighter arm shakes.

In the Bartók dances, Ms. Kopatchinskaja ripped harsh, hopping accents from her violin’s G string. She let her artificial harmonics quaver in a sly manner between the borders of set pitches. And she sat on syncopations longer than a more formal player would, making each harmonically lush dance feel uncommonly authentic and astonishingly risky. Her playing was powerfully feminine but not girly; her mischievous tendencies made it all the more arresting.

Ms. Ursuleasa, an equally gifted pianist with cat-eyes and a vampish grin, had made the dances supremely colorful, but her winning personality — less quirky and more directly passionate and sexy — took the stage in Liszt’s virtuosic warhorse. This was an explosive, Romantic account with pounding bass lines and surprising melodic flourishes around every corner.

Cage’s “Variations I,” an experimental performance-art piece, requires performers to apply transparent squares to a text, and then to musically imagine that text with their own menu of sounds and actions.The piece could certainly come across as dry and esoteric; they turned it into unbridled entertainment.

The women screamed, whispered, hummed, bowed, dropped a heavy book (a Staples catalog, no less), ate apples, stamped their feet, and employed every instrumental effect possible. At one point, Ms. Kopatchinskaja yelped the words “greatest amplitude” before popping a yellow balloon she’d blown up while she lay on her back. The duo also seemed to show an endearing sense of pride in their work, passing around graphs that they had concocted for their unique image of the piece.

After intermission, Zykan’s “With Voice,” a shocking, segmented array of virtuosic effects written expressly for the violinist, introduced a texturally transparent, singing evocation of the Enescu. In this performance long lines lingered, slidey tunes sang as if stolen from old wax-cylinder recordings, bleak landscapes and festive celebrations met each other head-on (>>Sound).

Ms. Kopatchinskaja kept fun a priority to the end, performing Grigoras Dinicu’s Semitic “Hora Staccato” as arranged by Jascha Heifetz (>>Sound). But her rendition was completely hers: She made facial expressions, swayed her head in manufactured confusion, and invited us into the work’s exciting inner moments with small, quick, mousy squeaks. But she didn’t hold her head high, and she didn’t show off (too much).

The violinist’s final, eye-opening encore was Giya Kancheli’s “Rag-Gidon-Time,” a witty recent work written for the great Latvian fiddler Gidon Kremer (>>Sound) - a bold but apt choice. Not since Mr. Kremer’s performance of the Bach solo sonatas at Columbia University in summer 2002 have I heard such a uniquely charismatic performance of violin repertoire in New York.

I might suggest that music lovers begin practicing the pronunciation of the word “Kopatchinskaja” (Koh-pah-chin-SKY-ah). They will undoubtedly want to say it to a record-store clerk or boxoffice ticketseller very soon (>>Deutsche Übersetzung)

(*) What is a pixie? Little creatures whose minds are as fleeting as their wings, they exhibit extreme curiosity, almost to the point of suicide at times, and more often than not are annoying. Pixies are Faerie creatures, and can usually be found playing in dales and glades throughout the forest and mountains, where ever there is a Faerie ring, there is a Pixie. These small creatures were once hunted, and treasured as delicate pets by the wealthy, however, have recently been accepted as a sentient race by the high council (Definition courtesy AstroMUD)

Charismatic Fiddler (American Symphony Orchestra, Lincoln Center, New York)

Adam Baer in The New York Sun, 24.11.2003:  ...Dénés Varjon, a clear, open-sounding Hungarian who has studied with András Schiff, displayed fast, soft hands that gave Weiners gratuitously notey figures a crystalline quality. The pianist then offered a modal Bartók encore that muted the room.

Even more successful was Patricia Kopatchinkskaja’s performance of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto. A compact Moldavian woman of 26, she infused this truly neoclassic masterpiece with pungent attitude, sensuous yelps, sharp attacks, silvery harmonics, and an understanding of the work. Mr. Botstein sometimes had trouble keeping his band together, but that was hardly noticeable.

Ms. Kopatchinskaja then rattled off a stirring encore written for her by the Austrian composer Otto Zykan. The work employs every pyrotechnic trick imaginable — it had her stomping her feet, scat-singing (“Tah-tah-tahhh”) over the notes, and at work’s end, spinning her body while sliding up the fingerboard to stratospheric heights.

Note: If you are a presenter or manager reading this review, engage this charismatic fiddler; she will make you very successful. At intermission, some pre-teens recapped Ms. Kopatchinkskaja’s performance within my hearing: “Man, she rocked out,” one said to another.“I know, I mean,” another stuttered excitedly, “I, like, never heard anything like that! D—!” ... (>>Deutsche Übersetzung)

West Cork Chamber Music Festival

Michael Dervan in Irish Times vom 8.7.2003: The Third Violin Sonata of George Enescu dates from 1926 and is one of the most evocative works in the violin and piano repertory. The piece is described on its title page as being "dans le caractère populaire roumain". And it is exactly that - Romanian character - that the composer chose to invest it with, rather than quotations of actual Romanian folk music. The printed music, particularly the violin part, is littered with an unusual number of detailed markings, yet the spirit that comes out of it is that of improvisation. "I know of no other work more painstakingly edited or planned," remarked Enescu's pupil, Yehudi Menuhin. "It is correct to say that it is quite sufficient to follow the score for one to interpret the work." It helps, of course, to have musicians who understand the idiom, as Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Hugh Tinney, the duo who played the sonata at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival on Thursday, clearly do.

Kopatchinskaja is as free-spirited a violinist as you could imagine. She makes her instrument sing, weep, dance, cajole, flirt. She has an astonishing command of nuance, and doesn't need to shift dynamic gear to run the gamut of emotional expression. She plays the violin not really as an instrument, but as an extension of herself. And, coming as she does from modern-day Moldova, she has long been exposed to the very music Enescu was re-fabricating in such minute detail (>>sound). Tinney was a patient and painstaking partner, weaving a clear background for Kopatchinskaja's manoeuverings, wispy, firm or jaunty, as the composer requested. The duo also played the early Violin Sonata by Karol Szymanowski, the leading Polish composer of the early 20th century. Here, Kopatchinskaja's assertiveness sounded like an attempt to raise the music above its actual level. It's not one of the composer's best works, and the effect in performance was to weaken rather than strengthen it (>>Deutsche Übersetzung).

 

Exceptional tonal interest

Dennis Rooney in The STRAD, March 2003: Patricia Kopatchinskaja (playing a very colourful-sounding Pressenda violin whose viola-like quality lent her playing exceptional tonal interest) and pianist Christopher Hinterhuber gave a recital at Weill Hall. They offered strong accounts of Schumann's Sonata in D minor op. 121 (despite some moments of overvehemence) and Bartok's Sonata no. 1 op. 21, as well as a jokey and physical realisation of Cage's variations (1958) in which the performers shouts and movements accompagnied the pitch and durations of instrumental sounds. Their interpretation of Ravel's Tzigane though was disappointing, its momentum inexplicably dissipated (>>Deutsche Übersetzung).

 

Patricia interprets the notes on the page freely 

Jacqueline Perregaux and Andreas Schiendorfer in Credit Suisse Emagazine, 9.9.2002: 9.09.2002: >>full text 

 

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