Lisa Batiashvili, Milana Chernyavska - Brahms, Bach, Schubert: Works for Violin and Piano (2001)

Anyone who was fortunate enough to have attended the 2000 Prom where 22-year-old, Georgian-born Elisabeth Batiashvili played Beethoven's Violin Concerto will know what to expect from this new EMI Debut CD. The tone is secure and strong (rather than especially 'big'), the bowing invariably seamless. It's a warm, evenly deployed sound, while the manner of phrasing is uncommonly mature.

Batiashvili is possibly the most gifted young violinist to appear on the scene since Isabelle Faust, certainly the most musical, and her command of all three works is impressively comprehensive. Bach provides evidence of her quiet individuality, her confidential manner in the great 'Sarabande', although I wasn't sure either about the slow tempo for the succeeding 'Double' or the way she lingers momentarily before accelerating to speed in the Corrente's 'Double' - a minor mannerism that might become irksome on repetition. I wouldn't even mention these points were it not for the fact that in other respects her playing is so subtly graded, and so sensitively modulated (as in the slower sections of Schubert's B minor Rondo), that any conspicuous gesture seems Out of place. Another tiny point occurs at 359" into the Schubert, where what should be a rollicking return to the main subject is a little stiff-jointed (compare the less fussy Max Rostal and Cohn Horsley on Symposium, 1/90). And when I say 'little', I mean little - just the slightest over-emphasis in a performance that is otherwise a distinct cut above the average, crisp and beautifully articulated. The Brahms Sonata is again profoundly musical, with nicely shaded support from Milana Chernyavska (try the point in the first movement where the piano takes over the principal theme, at around 340") and at its best in the finale, which benefits from such a disarmingly lyrical approach. Batiashvili occasionally brings to mind the young David Oistrakh, whose playing was similarly poised - though her tone production is quite different to Oistrakh's, more on a par with, say, the discreet profile of Arthur Grumiaux. It's a significant talent, and make no mistake, captured here in clear, well-aired sound. -- Rob Cowan