Review: Violinist Lisa Batiashvili Plays Beethoven with the LA Phil

By Laurie Niles: Can any violinist truly conquer this diabolical instrument's formidable technique, to the point where it simply sings, straight from the heart? Even when watching very fine violinists, I've seldom seen the kind of mastery that suggests complete freedom from the struggle for intonation, pure sound and artistic clarity. But on Friday that is exactly what Berlin-based violinist Lisa Batiashvili displayed - a rare kind of precision and purpose, paired with daring and abandon, as she performed the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Robin Ticciati at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The performance was repeated again on Saturday and Sunday. Surely, Batiashvili is on par with any top violinist of today or the past. I first learned of Batiashvili more than a decade ago, through her stunning 2011 recording of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1. As a Deutsche Grammophon artist she also has recorded the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius Concertos (2016), Prokofiev concertos (2018), and more. The recordings are all to-die-for, but nothing compares to a live performance. And while all these recordings set my expectations very high, I was still bowled over by her prowess, live on the concert stage. Prior to Batiashvili's performance, the LA Phil, with Nathan Cole sitting as concertmaster and Ticciati conducting with no baton and also no score, performed Antonin Dvorak's "Prague Waltzes." It was a nod to the traditional Viennese New Year's marathon concerts that feature Strauss Waltzes, "only it's not Viennese, and it's not by Johann Strauss," as Associate Principal Second Violin Mark Kashper explained in a humorous introduction that opened the concert. Incidentally, Kashper also explained that "second violins" is actually "an abbreviated version of our title, which is really 'second-to-none violins.'" (!!) Kashper, who is celebrating his 47th year with the orchestra, noted that he was sitting next to one of the youngest members of the orchestra, the newly named Assistant Principal Second Violin, Isabella Brown. (Her brother is violinist Joshua Brown - talented family!) I'd never heard Dvorak's "Prague Waltzes" and the LA Phil had never played them before, but they were as billed: a well-crafted Bohemian take on the Viennese Waltz, lilting and lovely, a little more dramatic and played without that hiccup beat that is characteristic of the "Viennese-style." For the Beethoven violin concerto, the orchestra was reduced by nearly half, and the delicacy of that long introduction - timpani, woodwinds, strings reduced by nearly half - contrasted noticably with the playful waltz music that had preceded it. At last came the soloist's entrance: beautifully precise octaves, with Batiashvili delivering a gorgeous and spinning sound from the 1739 Guarneri del Gesù violin she plays. Everything stilled at her sound, which she made interesting and expressive, even in those moments when the score called for nothing more than a long trill. Nothing seemed to stop the momentum that she created in any given passage, it felt sure and inevitable, all with expertly calibrated dynamics. Her movements alternated between solidity and fluidity, never distracting from the music. Details small and large came across with ease - she knew when and just how much to punch out the little notes to make herself heard. She played the familiar Kreisler cadenzas, full of trills, double stops - with impressive control. At the end of the first movement the LA audience clapped and whooped a bit before she returned to the business of playing the next two movements.

Violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Photo by Elizabeth Asher, courtesy of the LA Phil.

The soloist doesn't play the melody for most of the second movement - just dances around it, almost bird-like. Batiashvili urged the tempo on, not letting it lag, and then brought it down to something very intimate toward the end. The third movement was fast, intense, muscular, with Batiashvili tossing off a flurry notes with great speed, pushing orchestra to keep up. The cadenza was as fast and perfectly rendered as I've ever heard. When the music called for calm, Batiashvili turned from frenzied madness to near-stillness on a dime. After her performance the standing ovation was immediate, with four curtain calls prompting her to play an encore: "Doluri" by Aleksandre Machavariani, a Georgian dance in honor of her background and of the people continuing to fight for independence in her native country. It started whisper-soft, with whip-fast triplets that grew to a victorious finish. You might also like:

• Interview with Lisa Batiashvili: the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and Life's Path
• Interview with Lisa Batiashvili: Tchaikovsky at Last
• Interview with Lisa Batiashvili: Shostakovich Violin Concerto (2011)

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