Brilliant violin with a spellbinding finale (review)

The Burghofspiele Festival assigned a preferential place to a symphonic work by Antonín Dvořák. As in previous years, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, which performed at the Kurhaus, was the guest at the fifth concert in the Dvořák cycle.

The programme included the Eight Symphony and the Violin Concerto in A minor, two pieces that strongly reflect the original musicianship, drawing on folk sources, of the Bohemian-Moravian composer. The two works were preceded by the symphonic poem The Water Goblin, based on a ballad by the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben, in which listeners were exposed to the composer’s other side.

(…) Under the precise, encouraging and focussed leadership of Zdeněk Mácal, the orchestra captured the impenetrable tone of the dark ballad. The counter-pole of the bottomless sadness of the piece was the affirming, vital tone of the Eighth Symphony, which brought the concert to a close. (…)

The interpretation of the excellent instrumentalists from Prague was, thanks to its impassioned delivery, (…) a precise reflection of a happy period for Dvořák, a radiant biographical insight into the composer’s emotional life, with an excellent performance by the string and brass instruments.

However, the key moment of the evening was the encounter with the very talented violin player Liza Ferschtman, who without doubt has a great career ahead of her. Through her passionate rendering, she lit up Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A minor, managing the technical difficulty of the piece with absolutely pure intonation and somnambulistic confidence. In her delivery, she happily united emotional empathy with sparkling temperament, and the whole thing ended with a spellbinding finale and a fitting response from the auditorium. The heartfelt applause also belonged to the conductor and orchestra.