The Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
March 18, 2015

Violin loving Sydneysiders are currently being treated to a year of concerti. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s 2015 offering is peppered with almost every great violin concerto in the classical canon (and even a couple of new additions), and consequently some of the world’s most expertly gifted violinists are gracing the stage of the Sydney Opera House’s Concert Hall in the coming months. However, while musical pleasures aplenty no doubt await, the performance of Dutch virtuoso Janine Jansen, who delivered a remarkable account of the Brahms Violin Concerto on Wednesday evening, has set the standard stratospherically high.

Equipped with an ironclad technique, Jansen is able to navigate the full range of her instrument with an effortless elegance and dexterity. This is paired with a rich, robustly polished tone that rings with a luminous sonority throughout her entire tessitura. This ability to extract such a generously sumptuous tone in any register is a particular advantage when tackling Brahms’ challenging writing, which demands both controlled delicacy and impassioned aggression at both extremities of the violin’s range.

However Jansen is more than just a well-equipped technician. While the laser-beam concentration of her tone at full-throttle...