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Patricia Kopatchinskaja will be the Music Director of and performer at this year’s Ojai Music Festival, June 7-10. The venue is known for its innovative and cutting edge programming and as such, will feature works by Beethoven, Kurtag, Berio, Cage, Ligeti and Galina Ustvolskaya.
Kopatchinskaja was born in Moldova and studied in Vienna at the University of Music and Performing Arts. The pianist-collaborator on this recording is St. Petersburg-born Polina Leschenko, who has worked with high profile artists such as Julia Fischer and Sol Gabetta. The release is called Deux, which is an appropriate name for two turbo-charged talents who seem to have a similar interpretative mind set where fleet fingerwork gives melodies and everything else a fast, furious and often luminous glow.
Their playing of Poulenc’s Violin Sonata and Bartok’s Violin Sonata No. 2 is really over the top in terms of technical thrills and expressive flamboyance that includes a kaleidoscope of sound waves, harmonics and pizzicato plucking, particularly in the outer movements of these works.
Their account of Bartok’s sonata, written in 1922, rivals Switzerland’s Hadron Collider in terms of sheer acceleration and montage passagework that makes Bartok sound more atonal than one might expect – although some of his string quartets have a wonderfully new age feel. And Kopatchinskaja’s reading of Ravel’s Tzigane evokes an inflection used by Roma folk musicians for its earthy string tone sounds and metric accentuation, particularly in her opening solo.
Leschenko’s dazzling and atmospheric playing is on display in Tzigane and also Dohnanyi’s arrangement of Waltz from Delibe’s Coppelia. It’s a roller coaster ride of brazen virtuosity that will leave you breathless, although stylistically in tune with Dohnanyi’s 1929 recorded performance on YouTube.
What’s that saying: If you got it, flaunt it and that’s just what Kopatchinskaja and Leschenko are all about.