The Mischief Volcano Explodes

I'll try to keep this short and restrained, but you know me and post-gig euphoria …

Britten Sinfonia time again, this time featuring a cataclysmic eruption of Mount Kopatchinskaja.
You DO know Patricia Kopatchinskaja, right?
Her reviews come glutted with "punky", "electrifying", "volcanic", "unchained", "wild" and "completely bloody barmy."

Anyhoo … She was in charge this evening and boy howdy, did she live up to her reputation and then some!
I first came across her by being a fan of her dad: the insanely virtuosic Moldovan Gypsy cimbalom player Viktor Kopatchinsky. She has a reputation for letting loose the Lords of Misrule upon the world of Classical music and so I turned up this evening expecting fun and fireworks and got 'em in spades.

First up: you'd be disappointed if I didn't do my usual BritSinf fashion notes. So … the prizes this time around go to Miranda Dale, resplendent in a jet black crushed silk gypsy outfit that looked like it had spent the last week getting trashed in a cement mixer. Sexy as hell!
Even she, however, got upstaged by Kopatchinskaja herself, who had raided Morticia Addams' wardrobe for a diagonally cut patchwork of what for all the world looked like bat-wing skin … and bare feet.
Well, she came on stage in gold sequinned slippers but kicked them off and then proceeded to kick them all around the stage for the rest of the evening, only putting them on again to walk off after the encore.

Right … The menu: The string and chorus arrangement of Brahms' last work, filled with the darkness of his impending death but still as romantic as only Brahms can do. The five pieces used by the BritSinfs separately as introductions to the main works with no applause allowed between.

The big new work: Tigran Mansurian's Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra No.2 (soon out on ECM).

Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances.

Janáček's String Quartet No.1 (the Kreutzer Sonata) arranged for the BritSinfs.

Mendelssohn's Concerto in D minor for Violin and Strings.

The Britten Sinfonia are - as you must know by now - never the most restrained and genteel of bands, but under Kopatchinskaja's direction they let rip with abandon. Kopatchinskaja herself? Well the entire universe could have exploded and nobody would have taken their eyes off her. She twirled, stomped, stalked through the other players, emoted, danced like all of Pussy Riot crammed into one tiny woman and set alight and played like a million dæmons unleashed from hell and looking to party. Never have Brahms and Mendelssohn been treated like that and they must have loved the thrashing they got.

Unlike Dorothy Parker's divine demolition of Katherine Hepburn with "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B" Kopatchinskaja ran A through Z, α through Ω, А through Я, あ through わ and all alphabets beyond. The sheer number of facial expressions she pulled was astonishing, yet every one signified nothing but a woman completely lost in the music and squeezing emotional intensity from every pore.

What she did with Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances defied belief and as she landed from a final leap with a joyous "YEAH!" we could do nothing but scream, clap and stomp for more.

An astonishing evening of pure joy, mischief and magic, polished off by a duet encore (with star violinist Thomas Gould) of Bartók's Pizzicato.

We wandered off into the night ten years younger and ready to party.

If you ever get the chance to see Kopatchinskaja in action, DO it! Maim a relative or kill a friend if you have to but go see her. It's the best piece of advice I'll ever give you.