Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Nicolas Altstaedt: Bowed Spaces

The Strad Issue: April 2026

Description: Fearless performances, though this album is sometimes a tough listen

Musicians: Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin) Nicolas Altstaedt (cello) Munich Chamber Orchestra/Clemens Schuldt, Bas Wiegers, SWR Experimentalstudio

Works: Illés: Vont-tér; skEtch 1; Rajzok I; skEtch 2; Sírt-tér; skEtch 3

Catalogue number: ALPHA ALPHA1221

Dispensing as it does with such apparently fundamental musical concerns as melody, harmony, even conventional rhythm, the music of Budapest-born Martón Illés can make for a disconcerting listen, at least on first encounter.

Even in these fiery, committed accounts from Patricia Kopatchinskaja (who has premiered four of Illés’s works), Nicolas Altstaedt and the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the works might merely come across as collections of gestures, with constantly unpredictably shifting soundscapes.

Immerse yourself in Illés’s music, though, and a deep logic quickly emerges, as sounds and textures develop and multiply, ideas recur or cut across each other.

Kopatchinskaja sounds entirely at one with Illés’s sometimes microscopically detailed writing in the opening violin concerto Vont-tér, and she brings a lot of knowing humour, too, to the far more volatile skEtches for solo violin and electronics.

Altstaedt has some slightly more conventional lines to work with in the concerto Sírt-tér, ratcheting up its tension and intensity inexorably in the composer’s depiction of what he describes as a ‘space for weeping’.

Clemens Schuldt directs a sometimes terrifyingly powerful performance of Rajzok I, which requires all 96 strings across its 24-player string orchestra to be retuned microtonally apart: the result is at times like a huge, wheezing accordion, at others more like all-consuming electronic noise.

Ironically, the very immersion that offers insights into Illés’s musical logic may also lead to a certain sonic fatigue by the end of the disc’s generous 76-minute duration.

DAVID KETTLE