Top 6 - Violin Concertos

One of the highlights of the summer was Lisa Batiashvili, pictured, playing the Shostakovich Violin Concerto at the Proms, so scintillating that the spirit and atmosphere came out of the radio in a way I'd hardly ever experienced before. She was neither a musician I'd heard of before and neither was the piece although I've long stopped being surprised by the variety and greatness of the Shostakovich oeuvre.

But I spent a few quid and a few hours exploring the violin concerto repertoire in somewhat more depth than I so far knew. In the end, it might not have added much to a top 6 as it would have been before and eventually one can tire of yet another virtuoso bravura performance of yet more flamboyance, but it's a rich and rewarding genre if taken in the right quantities.

The Bach Double Concerto would be a certainty for almost any list but in this glorious performance, it is reserved for top place, with Oistrakh and Menuhin providing a paragon example of everything a performance should be from a more demure age. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmmpjziKcFU&feature=related

Tasmin's performance of the Beethoven in Portsmouth Cathedral a couple of years ago would secure another giant of orchestral music a guaranteed place. For some reason, I don't know if it's his portrait or reputation, but Beethoven is never as dark and foreboding as one thinks he might be. Fidelio, the Late Quartets, Missa Solemnis, etc. all turn out to be much easier going than one thought they would be and the Violin Concerto is perfectly charismatic.

Although I'm supposed to be picking concertos rather than performances, Henning Kraggerud's passionate account of the Tchaikovsky at last year's Prom gets it in ahead of several other deserving cases as the long list is ominously too long for the dwindling number of places that remain.

And so with Tasmin's recording of the Sibelius coming in, for me, just ahead the other recordings I have by her, I'm left with only room for a personal soft spot for the much under-rated Mendelssohn, it always seems to me, who is a tremendous composer seemingly overshadowed by too many other Romantic nineteenth-century masters and I'm having his haunting opening over and above a few other very persuasive claims and some big names who, to be honest, didn't make quite as much of a case as I'd expected.