LONDON BARBICAN —  MOZART FESTIVAL, JULI 2007

Mozart and Magnus Lindberg: It´s not, on the face of it, the most likely partnership. But, thanks to the Mainly Mozart Festival in New York, and Mostly Mozart at the Barbican in London, a new violin concerto from Lindberg has come into being, and received ist UK premiere at the weekend.

I´d caught its European premiere last autumn in Sweden; and this time, around its frenzied fields of activitiy, its brilliance of imagination and its sheer phycial virtuosity, it seemed all the more remarkable. The commision was for a Mozart-sized band. The new concerto may be for chamber-orchestral forces (the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard have made it very much their own), and have three continuous movements in about half an hour — but the resemblance to a Mozart-sized scale of action stops here.

For a start, the strings are frequently divided into three or four parts each and, with a typcally Lindbergian mass of seething detail, the first movement hits you like a series of firestorms. The soloist here, the formidable Lisa Batishvili, seems to play almost as many notes as the entire orchestra: double and triple stopping, druming and thrumming — and, just when you least expect it, moments of near stasis, and a luxuriance in sweeping melody.  —  Hilary Finch, 31 July, The Times

 
As with that for clarinet, Lindberg's Violin Concerto is a significant addition to its repertoire, and if the present reception was largely for Lisa Batiashvili's assumption of the solo part, this was hardly unwarranted. A player having previously impressed for her sense of line and purity of intonation, she demonstrated a virtuosity second-to-none among what is now a formidable crop of younger violinists, while her co-ordination with the orchestra — aided by Thomas Dausgaard being among the most astute accompanists of present-day conductors — impressed with its precision and unanimity.

The Lindberg ended a lengthy first half that had otherwise consisted of Mozart ... Nothing if not ambitious, Dausgaard devoted the second half to Beethoven's ‘Eroica´. Those familiar with this, or any other volumes in his and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra's excellent survey of the orchestral music (on Simax) will know just how positively he effects the compromise between historical awareness and interpretative license. The first movement was powerfully shaped at a driving tempo in which articulation did not suffer; the apex of the development section was startling in its dissonance, and control of tension in the coda was judged to a nicety. The 'Marcia funebre' was kept moving but lacked nothing in pathos — the central fugato infused with a sense of striving rather than yearning, and the disintegrating final bars touching in their inwardness. The main section of the scherzo did not 'shimmer' but had the required incisiveness, while the trio brought out the best in a trio of horns that — if not always at their best — here excelled in their jocose interplay. In the finale, Dausgaard reinforced the ingenuity of its developing-variation form with an excitement and, in the closing stages, surging grandeur that made it all of a piece to what had gone before.
—  Richard Whitehouse, Classicalsource.com
 
 
On into the main hall, for a remarkable concert by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. Its 40 musicians belie the description and demonstrated comprehensively that no more are needed for the Eroica which sounded magnificent at The Barbican; no one there would have wished it had been a bigger band.
Their quality had inspired Lindberg to elaboration in orchestral scoring for his new concerto (strings divisi). Because of his economy in writing for a modest Mozartean orchestra this marvellous new work, its three movements played continuously, could have a fruitful concert life - if other violinists emerge with the comprehensive technique of Lisa Batiashvilli, who introduced it to England with panache and sensitivity to its beauties ...

The Don Giovanni overture was a powerful call to attention, and the Eroica was followed by encores, including Alfvén's Dance of the Shepherd Girl and a sumptuous showcase for the strings in Sibelius' Andante Festivo - the party atmosphere rather like Beecham's with his lollipops.
—  Peter Grahame Woolf, Musical Pointers