To kick-off the concert under the baton of Giuseppe Lanzetta, chief conductor of the Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina in Florence [the orchestra presented] the Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47 by Jean Sibelius with Itamar Zorman from Israel as a soloist, winner of, among others, the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the International Violin Competition in Freiburg. Jean Sibelius, himself a violinist who, according to his own statement, would have liked to become a violin virtuoso, gave as a fellow professional to the soloist of his late-romantic work all imaginable and seemingly almost impossible technical difficulties. Softly, as if coming from very far away, the solo violin introduced itself to the audience over the backdrop of violins and grew in a crescendo together with the orchestra culminating in an intermediate cadenza. The big solo cadenza of the first movement, Allegro moderato, was interpreted by Zorman with similarly relentless suspense, with occasional irreverent interruptions by winds and brass…The dancelike, spirited last movement, riddled with violinistic ingenuities, was presented by Zorman with seeming effortlessness and with intense musical abandon and prompted a euphoric response from the audience.
Badener Tagblatt, March 13, 2013