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In classical music, we think we know how the great pieces go. We hear these standards so often \u2014 they have formed our ears so thoroughly \u2014 that it can be hard to imagine why some of them were resisted when they were new. Take Tchaikovsky\u2019s beloved Violin Concerto, which endears us with its graceful lyricism and good spirits.<\/p>\n
Not when Patricia Kopatchinskaja plays it.<\/p>\n
Kopatchinskaja, who makes her New York Philharmonic debut<\/a> on Wednesday, released a recording<\/a> of the Tchaikovsky in 2016. The performance is bracing and even manic, pressing toward extremes of loud and soft, fast and slow. Kopatchinskaja\u2019s violin often sounds raw and wiry; she plays as if she\u2019s improvising on a fiddle at a sweaty barn dance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For once, you understand what the 19th-century critic Eduard Hanslick was talking about when he panned the piece as \u201cstink one can hear.\u201d \u201cThe violin is no longer played,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt is pulled about, torn, beaten black and blue.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kopatchinskaja doesn\u2019t always beat music black and blue. She can reduce her sound to a fragile whisper, or honey her tone into sweetness:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But she always strips away the fat, giving canonical works a breathing \u2014 indeed, panting \u2014 vitality. She grounds decorous masterpieces in the earthiness of Central European folk traditions.<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t do plush or placid. Pretty? Kopatchinskaja gives you biting wildness.<\/p>\n Born in Moldova in 1977, she moved with her family to Vienna after the fall of the Soviet Union and developed into one of music\u2019s quirkiest stars<\/a> \u2014 and not just because she made a habit of performing barefoot. She has avoided the usual endless tours of Beethoven and Brahms. Instead, with similarly open-minded colleagues, she\u2019s organized a slew of idiosyncratic, time-spanning<\/a>, sometimes staged thematic programs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Their mood is often dark. \u201cDies Irae\u201d evokes war and other catastrophes with works from Gregorian chant to George Crumb. Anchored by Beethoven\u2019s \u201cPastoral\u201d Symphony, \u201cLes Adieux\u201d is a funeral for a warming planet. Religiously infused solemnity emanates from her 2023 album \u201cMaria Mater Meretrix,\u201d<\/a> a mesmerizing exploration of the figure of Mary in music through the ages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kopatchinskaja favors small, agile ensembles like the Camerata Bern of Switzerland, her partner on \u201cMaria Mater Meretrix\u201d and other recent albums. When she works with major orchestras, she tends to play contemporary music or the more modern side of the standard repertory, like Stravinsky\u2019s concerto<\/a>, which she will perform with the Philharmonic this weekend; its elegant angularity is a perfect fit for her lean sound.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her appearance in New York should be treasured since she doesn\u2019t play often in the United States. (Her stint as an artistic partner of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota ended in 2018<\/a>.) But even if you can\u2019t go see her, her recordings convey much of the intense commitment of her live performances.<\/p>\n \u201cRapsodia\u201d<\/a> (2010) brought her together with her parents, who played in Moldova\u2019s state folk ensemble: her mother as a violinist and violist and her father on the cimbalom, the twangy Hungarian hammered dulcimer. On the recording, wild folk tunes \u2014 almost bluegrassy \u2014 are juxtaposed with art music by Enescu and Kurtag and Ravel\u2019s \u201cTzigane,\u201d with the piano part transcribed for cimbalom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Personal, adventurous, surprising, charming, throaty, a raucous party that\u2019s somehow rigorous and informal at once: The album is classic Kopatchinskaja.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n So is the Tchaikovsky concerto, which she recorded with the equally provocative conductor Teodor Currentzis and MusicAeterna. That take, for all its daring, is more persuasive than some of her early recordings of standards, like a Beethoven \u201cKreutzer\u201d Sonata<\/a> so harsh it can make you wince.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The first movement of that \u201cKreutzer\u201d feels more intent on puncturing listeners\u2019 expectations of the core Classical-Romantic repertory than on offering a better alternative. Music that dances, though, finds Kopatchinskaja at her most irresistible, and she blazes through the sonata\u2019s tarantella finale with rhythmic spiciness and snap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her chronology-hopping programs with staged elements, while ambitious by the standards of classical music, can come off a little scrappy and sophomoric in person. When recorded, though, these combinations of old and new, well known and unusual, are far more successful.<\/p>\n \u201cDeath and the Maiden\u201d<\/a> (2016), with the St. Paul orchestra, ingeniously threads Renaissance melodies and some morose Kurtag through a heated ensemble arrangement of Schubert\u2019s \u201cDeath and the Maiden\u201d Quartet. By alternating Vivaldi concertos with contemporary Italian pieces, \u201cWhat\u2019s Next Vivaldi?\u201d<\/a> (2020), with the conductor Giovanni Antonini and his Il Giardino Armonico, offers a new context for Baroque virtuosity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n