18-03-2015  St David's Hall, Cardiff
Sibelius Violin Concerto 

Vadim Repin, Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy

"One is frequently gratified in performances of the Violin Concerto if the player can simply get round the notes, but Vadim Repin did considerably more than that. He consistently managed to introduce new and well-considered insights and subtleties which were far removed from sheer virtuosity – although there was plenty of that too, especially in his sparkling account of the final movement. Earlier there had been moments when the flow of the music seemed to hang fire, with soloist and conductor seeming to wait on each other, but that was probably the result of Sibelius’s score itself, with the abridgement of the original and even more virtuosic writing toned down. In the context of an all-Sibelius programme there seemed to be no obvious candidate for a solo violin encore, and quite rightly Repin did not give us one. He had already given us plenty of good solid meat beforehand."

Paul Corfield Godfrey