Thursday 6 November 2008

The evening started well with one of my favourite steak koftas (lots of garlic and coriander). We continued with Joyce DiDonato's new CD of Handel arias (with Christophe Rousset): Furore. DiDonato is an excellent singer for this music: passionate, involved, dexterous. A bit like the younger Fischer-Dieskau, she is sometimes just a little too involved for comfort and almost seems to be "hamming" it. But no great matter; it's a most enjoyable 75 minutes listening to her in Handel's varied and inventive music.

Then on to "Laureates", a CD from Russia consisting of excerpts from the public recitals of violinist winners of the Tchaikovsky Prize in Moscow. Six violinists: Ruben Agaronyan, Sergei Stadler, Rafael Oleg, Viktoria Mullova, Ilya Kaler .. and Akiko Suwanai who really takes the biscuit with a scintillating and devil-inspired rendition of Sarasate's Carmen Fantasia. The Russian audience (quite properly) goes wild. Quite difficult to listen to anyone else in this piece after this public performance by Ms Suwanai.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do you have the video of this live Suwanai Carmen? It's great as well.