There are the violinists whose instruments seem barely relevant, their tone appearing to emanate mysteriously from the ether. And there are the violinists whose music-making is audibly rooted in the physical contact between fingers, bow and string. Patricia Kopatchinskaja is among the latter – and Stravinsky’s 1931 Violin Concerto is an ideal expressive fit for this full-body performer.
In her latest Proms appearance, Kopatchinskaja hurled herself into each of Stravinsky’s movements with a kind of anarchic delight. No double-stopped chord was too outrageously far-flung, no moto perpetuum passage too fiddly, no filigree descant too stratospheric. Her tone was by turns ferocious and honeyed. Bowing came in harsh wedges, glistening cascades of spiccato and generous ribbons of velvet legato. The fiendish details were all there – indeed, the sharp angles and wild lurches of the third movement began to verge on mannerism. But Kopatchinskaja’s intensity was balanced by the Oslo Philharmonic’s diffidence. Their passages of neoclassical chugging were nonchalant, the wind and brass solos characterful but subtly detached, Stravinsky’s witty echoes and reworkings of Bach made achingly cool.
Kopatchinskaja was not, in other words, this concert’s only source of weapons-grade charisma. Conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was a stiller, steelier presence on the podium than at her last Proms appearance in 2021. But she remains a communicative force to be reckoned with. After a performance of the Norwegian national anthem to commemorate the death of King Harald, Gražinytė-Tyla conjured an instant change of atmosphere in Øyvind Torvund’s Symphonic Poem No 1: Forest Morning. The opening’s twitters, peeps, gurgles and blips – some synthesised, most instrumental – were a delicate tapestry in sound. The louder moments that followed were brief and minutely controlled, the whole inhabiting an intriguing uncanny valley of near-tonality.
After the interval, excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet invited close listening to more familiar material. At one extreme, there was the violence of the opening’s cataclysmic orchestral shriek and the vicious tattoo heralding Tybalt’s death; at the other, sudden sentimental tenderness for Friar Lawrence and the almost inaudible violin shivers that began Juliet’s funeral. Throughout, Gražinytė-Tyla commanded high-definition playing from the Oslo Philharmonic – rendering this sometimes densely scored music utterly lucid.
• Available on BBC Sounds until 12 October. The Proms continue until 12 September.
