Don't be fooled: this youthful face belongs to an 18 year old violinist with a wealth of knowledge and a tried-and-tested technique. For proof, just look at his Bach record, which came out before this Tchaikovsky Concerto, also on Deutsche Grammophon. With every new outing, Daniel Lozakovich surrounds himself with famous formations: for Bach, the Bavarian Radio Chamber Orchestra; for Tchaikovsky, the Russian National Philharmonic under Vladimir Spivakov (himself a great violinist who conducted his first recital in 2010). This gutsy concerto is addressed by a musician with an ample, sparkling sound, capable of an intense virtuosity and a very tender melancholy. Alongside Spivakov, who also recorded this score, he is quite at home. The hands-on sound recording seeks out the fullness of lyricism here, without robbing the strings of their bite. Note that the young soloist learned his scales under Eduard Wulfson in Karlsruhe. This student of giants like Henryk Szeryng, Nathan Milstein and Yehudi Menuhin (no less) taught his young disciple the violin of the Russian school.
This young artist's voracious curiosity did the rest. And so, the second part of his programme here offers passages where pure melancholy has been distilled into music, as in Lensky's aria from Eugene Onegin, an opera that the violinist adores and knows by heart. His performance is inspired by previous interpretations by Fritz Wunderlich and Ivan Kozlovsky. And no-one could deny it: Daniel Lozakovich's violin sings! © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz