Lisa Batiashvili and Lorenzo Viotti Lead the LA Phil in a Program of Emotional Resonance, Showing How Technical Discipline Brings Romantic Passion to Life.
By John Lavitt
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 05-18-2026
Swiss conductor Lorenzo Viotti did not just make a standard Los Angeles Philharmonic debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Instead, he delivered a masterclass in emotional generosity. By pairing Karol Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor, the program underscored a fundamental truth: raw passion and emotion alone are not enough to justify a performance. Indeed, they only land when backed by exacting technique, years of dedication, and the collective precision of world-class musicians.
Violinist Lisa Batiashvili embodied this balance perfectly. The Szymanowski concerto is notoriously unforgiving. One of the most formidable challenges in the violin repertoire, it is a shifting, dreamlike landscape of erotic longing and emotional ambiguity. From her very first note, Batiashvili did not just play. While expressing an undeniable passion, she shaped every phrase with silken, effortless beauty.
What made her performance truly unforgettable, though, was how she weaponized that technique to convey something much deeper. Reflecting on the concerto, Batiashvili has said, “It’s a piece full of love and pain deriving from the restrictions experienced by a man who was in love with another man at a time when this was outlawed both legally and morally.”
At the same time, it is a piece written to reveal the messy boundaries of the human heart. Because those boundaries are so tattered and complex, their expression is anything but easy. Yet, because her technique is so complete, she could convey the work’s full emotional complexity with remarkable clarity.
Yearning, repression, ecstasy, and heartbreak were all on the table. Without pausing, she conveyed each nuance with seamless precision, laying bare the work’s deeply human core of longing and frustration. The deep ache of forbidden love, the forced concealment from authorities, the sudden bursts of joy — she rendered every emotion with extraordinary precision, making the audience feel them firsthand.
After intermission, Viotti turned his attention to Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, treating it like a giant, cinematic epic. Written when the composer was starting fresh in Dresden, the piece is all about turning personal struggle into massive, unforgettable melodies. Viotti built up the dark tension of the opening and handled the famous Adagio with patient restraint.
By the time he turned the orchestra loose for the fast, driving finale, the night had become a hard-won triumph. More than a century after its premiere, Rachmaninoff’s Second continues to arrive with the force of a physical wave. Guided by Viotti and anchored by Batiashvili’s incredible artistry, the night proved that rigid precision is not a cage for emotion. Instead, it is an ideal vehicle for transcendence.
