Classical review: Leonidas Kavakos / Nikolai Lugansky, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

WHAT a cracker of a recital yesterday by the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos and Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky.

Leonidas Kavakos / Nikolai Lugansky

Queen’s Hall

Star rating: * * * * *

It wasn’t about showmanship, and it certainly wasn’t about playing to popular taste, as the playlist of Janacek, Brahms, Stravinsky and Respighi readily acknowledged.

Instead, we witnessed a compelling demonstration of cerebral integrity that was intelligently structured, poetically expressed and profoundly moving, with 
any outward expressions of passion reserved for where it mattered.

That’s not to suggest any lack of excitement. Janacek’s violin sonata, which Kavakos unfolded with a teasing degree of emotional restraint, inviting us cautiously into the composer’s frenetic world rather than demanding our presence. By the close of it, though, we were completely drawn in.

This wasn’t about one person, of course, for the magic throughout the programme lay equally in Lugansky’s hands.

The engaging synergy between the two musicians was fundamental in imbuing Brahms’s G major sonata with a subtle lyrical glow, magically underlined by the pianist’s cunningly muted clarity.

Then there were the mutually ignited fireworks of Stravinsky’s gauchely excitable Duo Concertant. And ending with Respighi’s violin sonata in B minor recalled the spirit of Brahms, mind-blowing though it was in its final earth-trembling bars. A major treat.