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.
