The first movement and passacaglia of the concerto are simply gorgeous, from Lisa Batiashvili’s dusky but rich timbre to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s crystal-clear accompaniments. The rest of this disc disappoints. The quick movements have no nervous intensity at all, especially the scherzo, whose jog-trot tempo and total lack of passion make it sound merely like bad operetta rather than something wickedly, desperately sardonic. Similarly the finale, marked Burlesque, has all the humor of coming home and finding your pet goldfish floating belly up in its bowl.
Indeed, the remainder of the program is notable for its utter joylessness. Kancheli’s piece, for violin, taped voice, and strings, is one of those studies in pseudo-profundity that makes you want to slit your wrists. Pärt’s droopy essay for violin and piano is another, so let’s assign the left wrist to Kancheli and the right wrist to Pärt. The Rachmaninov has nothing to do with anything else and presumably was included to sell the disc. Fat chance of that.
Indeed, the entire program embodies everything that’s wrong with what is left of the major labels. First, there’s got to be a pretentious album title, like “Echoes of Time”–oops, that’s the actual one! Then there’s the random assortment of stuff on the disc and a liner note by the artist giving the impression that it was planned–as indeed it might have been, once the reality had been digested that no one would pay to have another concerto included to round out the program in more appropriate fashion. In truth, despite her less than impressive showing in the concerto (has the finale ever been launched less excitingly?), Batiashvili deserves better.
