Brahms Violin Concerto – Batiashvili and Thielemann

There is a particular sound the Staatskapelle Dresden makes in Brahms — dark, resined, faintly autumnal — and Christian Thielemann knows exactly how to release it. That sound alone is worth the price of this disc. Whether Lisa Batiashvili’s Brahms concerto quite rises to meet it is another matter.

The Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, op. 77, has never wanted for great advocates on record: Heifetz’s steel, Milstein’s aristocratic poise, Oistrakh’s burnished authority in his Klemperer and Szell recordings, Kremer’s astringent intelligence with Bernstein. Into that company, Batiashvili brings something quieter, a cultivated, songful musicianship that trusts the notes to speak without much rhetorical underlining. It pays real dividends in the slow movement. It asks real questions of the outer ones.

Joachim hovers over this piece the way a ghost hovers over a house he built. He fingered the solo part, argued Brahms out of a scherzo, insisted on the placement of that extraordinary opening tutti, nearly ninety bars before the soloist enters, an eternity by concerto standards of 1878 and still faintly startling in interpretation. Thielemann takes that introduction spaciously, weightily, almost symphonically, and the Dresden strings dig into the syncopations with real gravity. When Batiashvili finally enters, on that plunging arpeggiated statement, you want — I wanted, anyway — a touch more heat, more sinew, an assertion of presence commensurate with what has come before. She does not quite supply it. Her tone is lovely, cultivated, songful. It is not always weighty enough to stand up to Thielemann’s orchestra, which is playing, quite frankly, gorgeously.

The first movement is nearly forty minutes’ worth of argument in this account (well, thirty-eight for the whole concerto, but the Allegro non troppo carries the bulk of it), and it wants a soloist willing to duel, to press back against the huge Brahmsian paragraphs. Batiashvili plays with intelligence and unforced lyricism throughout, and her passagework in the development is clean, unfussy, musical rather than merely brilliant. But there are moments — the return of the second subject, the final pages before the cadenza (she plays Joachim’s, rightly; anything else feels like a betrayal of the piece’s DNA) — where I found myself wishing for more grit, more of the dark low-string sonority that a Milstein or an Oistrakh could summon seemingly without effort.

The Adagio is where this album earns its keep. That long oboe melody at the outset, gorgeously turned here by the Dresden principal, unhurried, warm as candlelight, sets up an atmosphere Batiashvili inhabits beautifully. She resists sentimentality, a real accomplishment given how easily this movement curdles into syrup in lesser hands. Her phrasing has an almost vocal quality, breathing rather than merely bowing, and Thielemann supports her with translucent, chamber-scaled textures. I only wished, at the movement’s climactic returns, for one degree more emotional risk, a willingness to lean into the anguish beneath the surface loveliness. It stays lovely. It could have been devastating.

The finale, that gypsy-tinged rondo Brahms wrote half in homage to Joachim’s own Hungarian-influenced style, wants dash, hair-trigger rhythmic snap, a touch of controlled abandon. Batiashvili and Thielemann give a reading that is elegant and buoyant rather than incendiary. Fine musicianship, everywhere. Just not much danger.

The disc’s second half turns to Clara Schumann’s Three Romances, op. 22, written in 1853 for Joseph Joachim himself, a nice historical thread running through this whole program, whether DG intended it or not. These are wonderful, undervalued miniatures, and Batiashvili plays them with real tenderness, partnered sensitively by Alice Sara Ott. The second Romance in particular unfolds with a kind of intimate, improvisatory sweetness that suits Batiashvili’s temperament far better than the Brahms does. Nine minutes of pure, unforced charm. I’d have taken another twenty of this pairing over some of the sturm und drang elsewhere on the disc.

Batiashvili remains a violinist of real distinction: cultivated tone, unfailing taste, a musical intelligence that never resorts to empty display. This Brahms will give considerable pleasure, especially to listeners who have tired of barnstorming approaches to the concerto. But those wanting the last ounce of heroic weight, the sense of a soloist standing toe-to-toe with one of the greatest orchestral scores in the repertoire, should keep their Oistrakh and Milstein close at hand. Exquisite playing. Not quite indelible.