D/B Album Review: Rapsodia by Patricia Kopatchinskaja

The album “Rapsodia” is a remarkable effort in which Patricia Kopatchinskaja evokes remembrances of her moldavian culture and family. The established classical violinist performs together with her parents – the mother being a classical musician as well, the father a traditional one.

[audio:Patricia Kopatchinskaja – Doina et hora marita.mp3]”One day when he was a boy my father was sitting in the field eating corn. The wind blew a torn sheet of newspaper to him. On it he read that the music school in the capital was calling for extraordinarily gifted children from the villages to come and learn a musical instrument. My father threw the corncob as far as he could and shouted – I’ve had enough of this village. I#m going to try my luck! He grew up to become the most famous cimbalom virtuoso in the soviet union.”

With her mother being a classically trained violinist who fell in love with this madman of a cimbalom or tsimbl) player, Patricia Kopatchinskaja commands the most wonderful power of being able to communicate between the musical worlds – a musical medium so to speak.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja & family | Rapsodia
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=SFfCat23_VE

On this Album – other than on her usual more classically marketed publications – she joins traditional balkan ciocarlias, doina et horas on the one side, and eastern european inspired modern composition on the other, such as György Kurtag, Ligeti and the wonderful George Enescu, whose third violin sonata is the early highlight of the album:

The mystic power of both the avantgarde and the folklore, the future and the past, are intertwined here. Delicate and almost timid beauty at the beginning, a dense play of swelling and decrease at last.

You will be able to experience Mrs. Kopatchinskaja play Tchaikovsky in Berlin (Konzerthaus) this winter, for Rapsodia performances  in Germany you will have to wait until may 2012.  Meanwhile, listening to this album – even for month – will make you shiver and travel through time and musical space.

________________________________________________________________

Patricia Kopatchinskaja – Rapsodia

published 2010 on naive

Website with concert dates | artist on naive | buy the album
________________________________________________________________