Andrew Clements 

Szymanowski: Violin Concertos; Mythes review – a fresh perspective

Baiba Skride tackles Szymanowski with a purposeful, evocative flourish, writes Andrew Clements
  
  


Baiba Skride's performance of Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto provides a sharp corrective to anyone accustomed to thinking of it as faux modernism, as a rather soft-edged exploration of exotic colours and chromatic harmonies. The tone of Skride's performance is set even before she makes her first appearance, as Vasily Petrenko launches the glinting, nocturnal introduction, with every instrumental strand vivid and distinct and with no suggestion of a vague, impressionist wash. When the violinist does enter, the crisply-etched profile of her playing ensures that the performance never lingers, nor is it allowed to be purely decorative. It brings a totally fresh perspective to the work, making it much closer in spirit to Szymanowki's Second Concerto, in that Skride is purposeful, once again giving real musical backbone to what can seem rather routine and meekly neoclassical. In the set of violin-and-piano Mythes, in which she is partnered by her younger sister Lauma, she attacks these essentially evocative pieces with unexpected ferocity.

 

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