Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Camerata Bern - Plaisirs illuminés - The Times

The latest album featuring the bare-footed violin maverick Patricia Kopatchinskaja is named after one of those hard-edged Salvador Dalí paintings of very perplexing images, this time involving rectangular boxes, eggs, a bleeding knife and 34 bearded cyclists. The music actually featured, however, is much easier to grasp. The theme is 20th and 21st-century music with a folk twist: just the kind of fare to get maximum voltage from PatKop (her Twitter name) and the excellent Camerata Bern.

Only 70 seconds are devoted to Bartok, though he’s the programme’s linking thread. We start with a chunky Musica concertante from Sandor Veress, one of Bartok’s Hungarian pupils, before landing on the superb 1966 Concerto for Strings by Alberto Ginastera, drawn from an earlier work written during an obvious fling as the Bartok of Argentina. Fiddling away with her Camerata colleagues, Kopatchinskaja generates so much tension and fury that it seems only fitting that the final bar naughtily features what sounds like the performers screaming.

The third highlight is Les Plaisirs illuminés itself, a recent Dalí-derived double concerto by Francisco Coll, much in demand for his orchestral skills and sense of the fantastic. Kopatchinskaja’s violin, teamed with Sol Gabetta’s cello, swings between straightforward beauty and high-speed slithering in 18 minutes of fun, flamenco, lament, and danger. This is a rewarding release.