Lorenzo Viotti conducts Kodály, Bartók, Dvořák – with Lisa Batiashvili

Still in his early 30s at the time of this Munich concert, Lorenzo Viotti has proven himself one of the most successful conductors of the young generation, in both the opera house and the concert hall. On the podium of the Munich Philharmonic, he shows himself to be a confident and elegant interpreter of Eastern European repertoire: Kodály's Dances from Galánta enchant with their richness of musical characterization; Dvořák's turbulent and expertly constructed Seventh Symphony refutes the cliché of the composer as always cheerful and purely intuitive; and Bartók's yearning First Violin Concerto – performed here by Lisa Batiashvili – is one of the composer's final essays in late Romantic style before he turned fully to modernism.