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Warner Classics4
The Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulovic is a maverick in the manner of Nigel Kennedy and David Garrett, a stage animal with a twist of difference. On his latest album, Radulovic wears a monk-like cassock down to the floor with hair down to his waist, as if he had spent the last forty days in a cave, communing with the eternal. The music he performs here is by Prokofiev, a composer whose eye was forever on the earthly and the existential. The surprise lies in the soloist’s approach.
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Radulovic plays the concerto softly and with introspection, requiring the Philharmonia Orchestra (conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali) to listen as intently as a fox in a field. These are survival issues. At this level of quietude there is no room for error or equivocation. For pure tone, you will struggle to find a more fully realised performance on record. Something of the struggle between soloist and mass gets lost in transmission, as does the composer’s bleak humour, but this is a defining account by a distinctive artist.The album’s companion pieces are more varied in mood. A Heifetz encore taken from Prokofiev’s first symphony is neatly done, as is the mazurka from Cinderella, both with Laure Favre-Kahn as pianist. More arresting are the sonatas for one violin and two, the latter with the highly promising Swede-Norwegian Johan Dalene. The Heifetz march from Love for Three Oranges reverts to unsmiling brilliance. The final piece is the grand waltz from Cinderella, backed by a Parisian ensemble known aptly as the Devil’s Trills. The playing is diabolical, in the – rub your ears – best meaning of that word.
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