Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Deux - The Times

Kopatchinskaja is famous for digging into the strings of her instrument like an old-time prospector desperate for gold. She always finds it too, especially in a repertoire where her Middle European folk roots are a real asset. Hungarian and gypsy rhythms haunt Bartók’s mercurial Violin Sonata No 2, here dazzlingly varied in tone colours, although the music-making’s more striking still in Ravel’s Tzigane. This is dispatched with such furious pluckings, squeakings and slitherings that at the end her bow must have been nothing but wisps and tatters. Leschenko is equally fearsome, rippling through notes with dexterous speed.