Nemanja Radulović, Johan Dalene: Prokofiev

The Strad Issue: May 2026

Description: A deeply personal approach proves revelatory

Musicians: Nemanja Radulović, Johan Dalene (violins) Laure Favre-Kahn (piano) Les Trilles du Diable, Philharmonia Orchestra/Santtu-Matias Rouvali

Works: Prokofiev: Violin Concerto no.2; Sonata for two violins; Solo Violin Sonata; Cinq mélodies; arrangements of ballet music

Catalogue number: WARNER CLASSICS 5026854355443

This stuffed-full release won’t be for everyone. Those who like their Prokofiev cool, clinical, crisp and ironic might be shocked by Nemanja Radulović’s full-blooded, rubato-drenched interpretations. But it’s clearly a passion project for the Serbian violin star, and his performances are fresh and unwaveringly committed.

Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali ensures the Philharmonia Orchestra – on particularly fine form – is alive to the rhythmic unpredictabilities and constantly shifting colours of Radulović’s almost improvised-sounding account of the Second Violin Concerto, albeit one that unfolds with a real sense of inevitability.

Johan Dalene joins him for a big-boned, sometimes furiously energetic performance of the Sonata for two violins, in which the two musicians are beautifully complementary while retaining their individual sounds and personalities.

Radulović’s account of the Solo Violin Sonata commands attention, playing up the piece’s debt to folk music and its sometimes concealed emotions, and his Cinq mélodies inhabit a world all their own, of whispered nuance and veiled suggestion, with immense passion surging beneath (and with sensitive but characterful contributions from pianist Laure Favre-Kahn).

Interspersed between these major works are a collection of virtuoso arrangements from Prokofiev’s ballets, cunningly ordered to offer revealing contrasts and connections. It’s a deeply personal collection, and Radulović is unfailingly compelling.

DAVID KETTLE