“Lisa Batiashvili was the breathtaking soloist, spinning out Szymanowski’s long, ecstatic lines with wonderful sweetness of tone and exquisite finesse”

“…Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, delivered with dazzling aplomb, and some succulent hush in the Canzonetta, by the reliably excellent Lisa Batiashvili.”

“She flings off the quicksilver flight of the scherzo with breathtaking brilliance”

“… the concerto does make a fine showcase for Batiashvili’s fearless playing, which is so tonally rich and technically immaculate.”

“… fabulously agile, intense soloist”

“She’s a dreamy-sounding, inward soloist at the start, shaping the melodies with care yet propelling them forward – this mammoth work has rarely seemed so concise. The Sibelius soars and sings in the first movement, and dances in the finale with a rare agility.”

“There is something so super-intuitive about (Lisa’s) playing that, while she is performing, the brilliance of her technique, the range of her colours and the sheer invention of her phrasing are subsumed into the intrigue of her musical storytelling”

“The first half of the second concert in the series was no less glorious, as Lisa Batiashvili joined Barenboim and his band for Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D. There was no trace of vanity in her playing or her body-language, and she presided over the orchestra as persuasively as Argerich had done – indeed, for much of the time Barenboim let this young Georgian virtuoso set the pace. She brought classical restraint to this high-Romantic music, with no indulgence in swoops or slides apart from the ones dictated by the score, and she delivered those – even when rapidly double-stopped – with flawless ease and precision; for the Canzonetta she found a chaste beauty of sound.”