Visions of Prokofiev features
Prokofiev’s two violin concertos – completed in 1917 and 1935
respectively and long-since established as classics of the 20th-century
repertoire – alongside three much-loved excerpts from the composer’s
stage works in arrangements by Lisa’s father, Tamás Batiashvili. The
Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Yannick Nézet-Séguin accompanies
Lisa’s violin on the album.
In Soviet-era Georgia, Prokofiev was
considered one of the foremost composers of the 20th century. As well as
being widely performed throughout the country, his music was on the
curriculum and therefore formed part of Lisa Batiashvili’s earliest
musical memories. When she moved to Germany in 1991, it was Prokofiev’s
music that shaped her as an artist. In her earliest days at the Hamburg
Musikhochschule, Mark Lubotsky set her to work on the “First Violin
Concerto”. Although Batiashvili, then twelve years old, did not
immediately grasp the powerful gestures and suggestive theatricality of
Prokofiev’s early work, she did familiarize herself with the concerto.
As her career developed, she began programming it on significant
occasions. Now a piece whose style she can fully identify with, it has
more or less become her calling card.
“Although 15 or 20 years ago
the ‘First Concerto’ wasn’t as popular as it is today, I played it in
major competitions and made a number of debuts with it,” says
Batiashvili. “It has a tenderness and dreamy detachment about it that I
find hugely fascinating. Prokofiev clearly has endless ways of conveying
the fragility and vulnerability of human experience. And yet everything
is so close to being expressed in a genuinely Classical manner. The
concerto’s closeness to ballet and the theatre is, of course, a result
of Prokofiev’s gift for defining individual roles and characters with
the most succinct and beautiful musical themes.”
There are
palpable, if informal, connections between the two concertos and the
three perennial favourites from Prokofiev’s ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella and his early opera, The Love for Three Oranges,
here heard in arrangements created by the violinist’s father, Tamás
Batiashvili. “The first time you hear it, the ‘Second Concerto’ might
seem rather more conventional and calculated than the ‘First’. But the
wonderful second-movement cantilena, for example, is a close relation of
the ‘Love Theme’ from Romeo and Juliet. What Prokofiev does in
the ballets is directly reflected in the character of the concertos.
Conversely, the best numbers from the ballets are so rounded that they
work even when they’re removed from their theatrical context.”
Above
all, as Batiashvili explains, Prokofiev is a composer “who truly
combines East and West, and whose music therefore has a sense of
timelessness.” The formal language of the German instrumental tradition,
a feeling for colour nurtured by French Impressionism, and, finally,
that combination of intense melodiousness and thrilling rhythmic energy
typical of Russian composers since the mid-19th century all come
together in Prokofiev. In 1917, the year of the October Revolution, he
left Russia to seek his fortune in the U.S. and Western Europe. By 1936
he had become an international celebrity but the economic situation in
the West had worsened dramatically. Overwhelmed by homesickness, he
returned to the Soviet Union. There he became a prominent servant of an
authoritarian system, acclaimed and reprimanded by turns. As fate would
have it, he died on the same day as Stalin in March 1953.
Lisa
Batiashvili, herself an emigrant, is another musician who naturally
combines Eastern and Western influences. Although she still has strong
ties to her native Georgia, and regularly returns to Tblisi to visit
friends and relatives and give concerts for her compatriots, she regards
herself as a European. Batiashvili lives in Munich with her French
husband and her children who were all born in Germany. She is no longer
forced to choose one country or way of life over another – her cultural
influences can coexist and complement each other.
The same is true
of her artistic life. Like many instrumentalists trained in the Russian
tradition, Batiashvili is fundamentally a Classicist. Clear
proportions, elegant lines, the beauty of restraint and as seamless and
natural a development as possible are more important to her than
virtuosic excess or striving after effect for its own sake. These are
qualities shared by the players of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe,
making them
the perfect partners for Batiashvili on this recording. The
members of the COE, among the finest musicians in the world today,
represent many different nationalities – a positive example of European
pluralism. They come together every year for a limited period to work on
chosen projects with leading conductors, such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Lisa Batiashvili has also played many an important concert under
Nézet-Séguin’s baton and is delighted to have had the opportunity of
working with him again here. “His way of making music is so natural, and
at the same time so moving,” she explains, “that you feel as though
you’re dealing with a force of nature. As far as I’m concerned, this
orchestra, Yannick and I together make an ideal artistic team.”
. . . [from the first chords of the "Figaro" overture, Nézet-Séguin]
establishes a bold, fully crystallized concept of Mozartean sonority and
the psychological implications behind it . . . [Christiane Karg as the
wily servant Susanna and Sonya Yoncheva as the Countess] are just
wonderful . . . [Luca Pisaroni's Figaro] makes dramatic points not with
his usual word articulation but with more microphone-friendly use of
tone Color . . . Even small roles are cast with stars: Anne Sofie von
Otter as Marcellina and Rolando Villazón as Basilio help sustain Act 4 .
. . [the 50-plus "Figaro" recordings on CD and DVD] show how the opera
showcases each generation of Mozart performers . . . Nézet-Séguin's
recording takes its place among these touchstones. A great musical
mediator . . .
