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Mexican cellist Carlos Prieto.
On Stage Potpourri By Edith Eisler The millennial spring season was a heady mix of old and new music and established and aspiring performers, including some very promising debuts. Taiwanese cellist Kenneth Kuo made his New York recital debut at Weill Hall, partnered by the fine pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera. Kua is an excellent player, with an effortless technique, a beautiful, warm tone, and an unabashedly romantic soul; his love for the music infused every note. The Rachmaninov Sonata was flexible but steady, expressive but not effusive; Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro was less restrained but too honestly felt to seem excessive. Kuo performed his own virtuosic arrangement of Chopin’s Introduction et Polonaise brilliante and also played his own transcriptions of three Taiwanese folksongs. In Bach’s C-Major Adagio, his expressiveness almost redeemed his romantic approach. The distinguished Mexican cellist Carlos Prieto returned to Alice Tully Hall with his splendid pianist Edison Quintana for a program featuring South American works, two of them New York premieres: Revueltas’ Three Pieces and Mario Lavista’s Three Secular Dances (the latter dedicated to Prieto). Both works alternate rhythmically propulsive sections with singing ones; Lavista gives each instrument its own frequently changing meter. The program ended with Ginastera’s Pampeana No. 2 and Piazzolla’s Grand Tango, and opened with sonatas by Shostakovich and Kodály. Both performers played with their customary instrumental mastery, idiomatic identification, and expressiveness; ensemble and balance were exemplary, and Quintana did some wonderful improvising in the last two pieces. The second of violinist Sylvia Rosenberg’s three Weill Hall recitals was even more impressive than the first for variety, depth, and projection. With pianist Barry Snyder again as admirable partner, Beethoven’s Sonata, Op. 96, was leisurely and expressive; the treacherous ending came off brilliantly. The Janácek Sonata was very romantic and free, with a spoken, rhetorical air but also meticulous attention to detail. The players brought out all the mood changes and colors with great idiomatic affinity and inward expressiveness. Violist James Dunham joined Rosenberg in two duets: Alexander Goehr’s Duo, Op. 66, a substantial, well-written, wonderfully conversational piece that exploits all the resources of the instruments, and Martinu’s lovely, colorful, and equally conversational Three Madrigals. Both works were played beautifully, with impeccable intonation and ensemble, unanimity of spirit, and infectious enjoyment of the music and the collaboration. Sylvia Rosenberg is also a distinguished teacher, and one of her former students, Kyung Sun Lee, gave a recital at Merkin Hall a few days later with pianist Brian Suits, her husband and longtime partner. Her program included Schumann’s Sonata No. 1, which Rosenberg had played on her first recital, but Lee’s approach was quite different and more lyrical. Sonatas by Prokofiev, Paganini, and Hindemith were played very well technically and with great seriousness and style. Though emotionally rather restrained, Lee cast aside her reserve in Joseph Achron’s Hebrew Melody and made its mournful lamentatiousness deeply moving. As winner of the 1998 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, Judith Ingolfsson made her Carnegie Hall debut in an extraordinarily impressive recital. Born in Iceland 26 years ago, she has studied with Jascha Brodsky, David Cerone, and Donald Weilerstein, won several prizes, and appeared widely with orchestra, in recital, and at festivals. She is a truly outstanding player. Her effortless virtuosity is a tool in the service of the music; her tone is ravishingly beautiful, pure and adaptable, her sense of style is unerring, her expressiveness simple, direct, and strongly felt. Ned Rorem’s Autumn Music, commissioned by the competition, taxes the violin’s and the violinist’s resources to the utmost. Bloch’s Poème mystique was noble, atmospheric, austere but warm. Brahms’ Sonatensatz was so urgently dramatic that some expressive details were lost. In Wieniawski’s Faust Fantasie, the hair-raising pyrotechnics were tossed off with stunning ease and style. Most striking, however, was Bach’s C-Major Solo Sonata: grand and noble in concept and execution, with every chordal and contrapuntal voice standing out, it was played with flawless sound and intonation, and perfectly controlled pacing, phrasing, and dynamics. The excellent pianist was Ronald Sat. The Avalon String Quartet, formed in 1995, has taken numerous prizes, is in residence at the Caramoor Festival and at the Hartt School of Music, and has been hailed as "the greatest young quartet" by no less an advocate than Isaac Stern. At its Weill Hall debut, the group displayed great seriousness and discipline, good intonation and ensemble, and a full, if hardly homogeneous, sound. The cellist’s and violist’s tone are best, while the first violinist employs a constant wide, fast vibrato. The players have obviously been coached within an inch of their young lives—their playing is too carefully planned to allow a moment’s spontaneous expression. Haydn’s “Joke” had little humor; the freewheeling, rhapsodic style of Janácek’s Intimate Letters was clearly alien to them, and Beethoven’s Op. 59, No. 2, was beyond their grasp technically, intellectually, and emotionally. The group clearly has the potential to develop into a first-rate quartet if it finds its own voice and stays together, but pushing it into a major career at this stage seems both unwise and unfair. Interestingly enough, the cellist and violist also play in the Amelia Trio, the latter as violinist. The Leipzig String Quartet, formed in 1986, has won many prizes and a reputation as exponents of both classical and contemporary music. At the 92nd Street Y, its playing was solid and conscientious, but also prosaic and undistinguished. Intonation, ensemble, and balance were good, though important lines sometimes got lost and takeovers were jerky. The program indicated the range of the group’s repertoire. Beethoven’s Quartet, Op. 135, was a bit thin in sound and superficial in expression, the opening surprisingly played without vibrato. Brahms’ No. 2 sounded better but lacked atmosphere and expressive detail; the liberties were dutiful rather than spontaneous. These two quartets flanked Webern’s Six Bagatelles and Hanns Eisler’s String Quartet, a strong, straightforward, well-structured piece that is fairly dissonant but quite accessible. The Vogler Quartet of Berlin celebrated its 15th anniversary with an American tour and a Weill Hall debut. Of the three quartets I heard, it was technically most proficient and musically most disappointing. All the players are extremely good. Their tone is singularly beautiful, pure and sweet but not cloying, with a big dynamic range and a good deal of variety; intonation and ensemble are perfect. They are disciplined and controlled to the point of mechanical rigidity, yet they seem unaware of such basics as bad string crossings and wrong accents; they change tempo for technical convenience, and their dynamics are arbitrary and explosive. Worst, their playing reveals no response to the music, imagination, spontaneity, or inward feeling. They never slide, but even this virtue, driven to excess, becomes an emotional liability. A great Haydn Quartet was stiff, loud, and ungracious; Wolf’s Italian Serenade was humorless, graceless, and aggressive rather than pleading—a parody of a serenade. Beethoven’s Op. 130 with the Great Fugue came off best, though it, too, was cool and distant, perfectly organized but not moving or sublime. An interesting mixed program was presented at Alice Tully Hall by members of the fourth generation of Puerto Rico’s most illustrious family of musicians, the Figueroas. The participants—pianist Ivonne, her brother Guillermo (concertmaster of several New York orchestras and an active conductor), and their cousins the violinist Narciso and his brother Rafael (principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera)—are all accomplished, versatile musicians who received their early training from their parents and uncles, one of whom they were honoring in this concert. Highlights were Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello and the Ravel Piano Trio, both played by Guillermo and Rafael, with Ivonne in the trio, and two scintillating Spanish dances, arranged for the family combination: Sarasate’s Navarra, and Boriquen by the family patriarch, Jesus Figueroa. Played with great flair and virtuosity by the two violinists, these delightful dances brought the house down. For a program of piano quartets, Isaac Stern invited his friends, pianist Emanuel Ax, violist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Carnegie Hall, which, though closely associated with him, is hardly the best place for intimate music. Having recently undergone hand surgery, Stern, now 80 years old, can hardly be expected to possess the technical or tonal resources of his prime, but his commanding musicianship and personality clearly inspired his partners to follow his lead and support him with deference and affection. In Mozart’s G-Minor Quartet, Ax stole the show with his elegant phrasing, subtly nuanced tone, and wonderfully imaginative ornamentation. In the Schumann, the viola and cello solos stood out, and in Brahms’ Third Quartet, the great slow-movement cello aria was ravishing. Ma, that indefatigable explorer of new stylistic territory, also appeared at Avery Fisher Hall with two very different collaborators, violinist Mark O’Connor and bassist Edgar Meyer, in a program called Appalachian Journey. It was drawn from the group’s recent record album of the same name, which is a sequel to its earlier, wildly successful Appalachia Waltz. To the classically trained ear, the slow ballads are most appealing; the fast numbers tend to sound repetitious. The music, arranged or composed by Meyer and O’Connor (sometimes for their own or one another’s wives and children), is inventively and skillfully designed to give all three players maximum exposure, and indeed the playing’s the thing. The concert proved again that even the best recording is no match for a live performance: what these players can do must be seen to be believed. They generated incredible speeds, perfectly synchronized and in tune; Ma and Meyer climbed way up their fingerboards to produce wonderful-sounding stratospheric notes. O’Connor’s tone had a beguiling sweetness and purity, Ma’s his characteristic warmth and intensity; he holds his bow above the frog for clearer fast articulation. The spirit was pure chamber music: impeccable ensemble, close rapport, infectious enjoyment. In recent years, several famous virtuosos have formed their own small orchestras of accomplished, eager young players willing to act as backup groups for their solos and vehicles for their conductorial ambitions. One of these is violist Yuri Bashmet, who, as conductor and star, brought his Moscow Soloists to Carnegie Hall. It was quite a show. Everybody played standing up except the cellists; the female players wore spike heels and skintight, low-cut dresses. The players are young, extremely good, totally responsive, and so relentlessly drilled that Bashmet seemed less a conductor than a puppeteer. However, he is a splendid violist; most striking is his gorgeous, flawlessly pure, incredibly varied, nuanced tone. He also fairly squeezed sound out of the orchestra, ranging from wispy and floating to ringing and powerful. His approach to the music focuses on external effects rather than inner experience. He exaggerates everything: in Tchaikovsky’s Serenade, Op. 48, the slow movements were static, the Waltz was fast and without lilt, and all were distorted by long pauses. Two slow pieces transcribed for viola showcased his ravishing tone, although in the Andante from Tchaikovsky’s Quartet No. 1 the viola stays in the low and middle registers. André Tchaikowsky’s arrangement of Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 13 is a very effective concerto, and Bashmet played it with genuine involvement. New York also welcomed a dazzling assortment of distinguished American and international symphony orchestras and conductors. Several programmed Russian music, including three Shostakovich symphonies, and many featured violin soloists. At Carnegie Hall, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov played its national music: Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 and Poul Ruders’ Concerto in Pieces, a set of variations for a huge orchestra based on the "Witches’ Chorus" from Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. The theme, after being stated high up in the violins, disappears; the variations highlight strange instrumental combinations and various solo instruments, including an alto saxophone in a jazzy blues. Finally, the music gets louder and louder, repeating little phrases like a broken record. Pamela Frank was the program’s excellent soloist in Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Possessor of a splendid, unobtrusive technique, a strikingly beautiful, dark, warm tone, and a fiery temperament, she brought out the austerity as well as the drama of the first movement, the simplicity and serenity of the second, and the Gypsy flavor of the third, playing with great expressiveness and involvement. Soloist and orchestra interwove thematic and supporting lines wonderfully, without overpowering the violin. After finishing the first movement with a big flourish, Frank warded off the inevitable applause by holding her bow aloft in playing position. Among the most interesting visitors was the Czech Philharmonic with its new music director, Vladimir Ashkenazy, whose three concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, billed as the Prague Festival, celebrated the tenth anniversary of the so-called Velvet Revolution. The programs featured composers who had some connection with Prague, ranging from Mozart to Hans Krása, who died in Auschwitz in 1944. The orchestra has recently fallen upon hard times financially, but its playing showed no signs of stress. It has the characteristic central European sound, with warm, homogeneous strings (there were also some excellent violin and viola solos), rich, glowing brass, and a strong ensemble spirit. Its only weakness lies in the woodwinds, which are a bit thin and not always in tune. Ashkenazy is a very active, involved conductor; he uses his whole body to express himself, but every motion is genuinely for the music, not for show. The series opened with Krása’s Symphony, written when he was 27. Part impressionistic, part parodistic, it has interesting irregular meters and never lets itself become truly lyrical. The last movement is a setting for soprano of a weird Rimbaud poem, "The Lice Pickers," in Max Brod’s German translation. The music seems as enigmatic as the words, but the orchestra evokes a very graphic picture. Orchestra and conductor really showed their stature in Mahler’s Symphony No. 7. Encouraging the music to speak for itself without exaggeration or manipulation, they gave a superb performance: austere, controlled, warm, deeply expressive but not sentimental, ironic but not vulgar, with buoyant rhythms and poised transitions, making this massive work seem more coherent than usual. The second concert was less impressive. Ashkenazy acted as conductor and soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20; facing the orchestra, his back to the audience, he created a chamber music–like atmosphere. The performance was competent but a little dry; the drama, the melancholy, and the mercurial mood changes were underplayed. The Suite from Janácek’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen was rather earthbound, lacking the poetry and shimmering mystery of the woodland scenes, but the dances really danced. Dvorák’s Symphony No. 7 was also too prosaic for me, especially the lovely, wistful Scherzo, which came out loud and aggressive; elsewhere, however, the playing was fiery and dramatic, and Dvorák’s Slavonic Dance in E minor as an encore was utter perfection. The third program included, predictably, Mozart’s "Prague" Symphony, but the rather stiff, cautious performance indicated that these players are not entirely at home in the style of their city’s adopted son. However, they were at their best again in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, which sounded warm, luscious, and wonderfully romantic, and Martinu’s The Frescoes of Piero della Francesco, whose three movements evoke the 15th-century artist’s paintings with a blending of Renaissance and Romantic styles; the music is tonal, melodious, and very beautiful, and the orchestration is rich and glitteringly colorful. The soloist was Kurt Nikkanen in Dvorák’s Violin Concerto. I have admired him before in recital, and he dispatched the treacherous opening brilliantly, but the performance was disappointing: labored, stiff, lacking the work’s idiomatic, wistful lyricism and quirky rhythms. The assertive passages came off best. Three orchestras brought violin soloists to Carnegie Hall. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is most excellent and seems in close rapport with Mariss Jansons, its music director since 1997. Weber’s overture to Oberon, with its brilliant passagework, proved a daring choice as program opener, and the horn solos were beautiful; Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring made a rousing, impressive ending. In between, Sarah Chang played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Now 18, she has the self-possession, as well as the gestures and mannerisms, of a seasoned virtuoso. Her tone is rich and smooth as butter, but so is her playing: there is no phrasing, no breathing, no nuance, no differentiation of mood or expression. Her performance was brilliant, but very fast and glib, as if she had played the piece too often. She seems to approach the music through the instrument instead of making the instrument serve the music. At the Philadelphia Orchestra’s concert, youth held sway. The soloist, the Danish-born, 25-year-old violinist Nikolaj Znaider, winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, was making his Carnegie Hall debut; the conductor, David Robertson, had made his a week earlier. He is excellent, all business, no show, very much on top of and inside the music; the musicians played their hearts out and sounded magnificent. Kurt Weill’s own Suite from his Three-Penny Opera strings together and conflates some of its famous tunes, but though it captures the original’s flavor, the words are sadly missing. Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 is unusually concise. Though he considered it lyrical and joyful, at least the first, slowest, and longest movement is heartbreaking, opening with a long, spun-out melody in the cellos; the other two, however, are indeed less grotesque than his characteristic scherzos. The performance was terrific. Znaider played Prokofiev’s Second Concerto brilliantly, with a lovely tone and great dignity and seriousness. The melodies sang warmly, but the passagework, woven around the orchestral themes, was often too subdued. There were three performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. All were technically brilliant, but Joshua Bell’s with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under Roberto Abbado, which I heard at a dress rehearsal, was much the best stylistically and musically. Bell’s tone shimmers like liquid silver but has great warmth and intensity, and he can vary it with bow and vibrato. He used daring fingerings for color, changing them imaginatively in repeats. His approach had classical nobility and simplicity: he phrased elegantly, in long, arching lines, his liberties were subtle, and his expressiveness was deeply felt, combining serenity and impetuosity, control and spontaneity. He performed his own very effective, rather complicated cadenzas. The orchestra played Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler very well, with a lovely sound and great care and affection. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra celebrated Zubin Mehta’s 30 years as its leader with a concert at his old home, Avery Fisher Hall. The Symphony No. 1 by the 90-year-old Israeli composer Josef Tal is a lamentatious piece in three connected, contrasting sections, featuring a mournful viola solo and high violin harmonics. The performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 shook the rafters but also projected the work’s tragedy, grotesquerie, and violent contrasts very effectively. The soloist in the Beethoven was Maxim Vengerov. Unfortunately, his version was fussy and mannered, the liberties unpoised and almost romantic, the finale rushed and not rhythmical. His tone is lovely and he is a fine violinist, but his playing lacked inwardness and the courage to let the music speak for itself. Midori’s performance of the Beethoven with the New York Philharmonic was even stranger. Her playing rarely rose above a whisper, with echo effects at every repeated phrase and motive, but at times it became rough and explosive. The tempos were very slow and kept getting slower, with many ritards and long pauses. The final impression was static, artificial, and altogether bewildering. The concert, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth in his Philharmonic debut, featured Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14, written in 1969 mostly during a hospital stay. A cycle of 11 songs using Russian translations of Spanish, French, and German poems, all on the subject of death, it becomes progressively more macabre, intense, and devastating. The sparse scoring for strings and percussion gives the listener a feeling of naked defenselessness and makes this one of Shostakovich’s darkest and emotionally most overwhelming works. The performance, with soprano Elena Prokina and baritone Sergei Leiferkus, was stunning, with many beautiful violin, viola, and cello solos, but cellist Carter Brey’s wide, lush vibrato stood in jarring contrast to the soprano’s pure, focused sound. The Philharmonic featured its principal hornist, Philip Myers, in a fine performance of the Hindemith Concerto, followed by Tchaikovsky’s grand, moving, but all-too-rarely heard "Manfred" Symphony, based on Lord Byron’s dramatic poem. Daringly original and masterfully orchestrated, the music vividly evokes the tormented hero’s character and inner turmoil, and the landscapes of his wanderings. An elfin, spooky Scherzo is followed by a peaceful, luscious slow movement; the final Bacchanale ends with a solemn brass chorale, an organ entering in the last few measures. Valery Gergiev conducted a fabulous, all-out romantic performance; great masses of sound filled the hall like a tidal wave, with wonderful solos from every section. This was truly music for the ear and the heart. A performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, a towering 20th-century masterpiece and a shatteringly eloquent protest against war and inhumanity, is always a major event. Britten combined the Latin liturgy, sung by the soprano, chorus, and boys’ choir, with nine poems by Wilfred Owen, who was killed a week before the end of World War I, sung by the tenor and baritone, achieving a magical fusion between ancient and modern styles and between earthly suffering and celestial serenity. The scoring for chamber orchestra and organ within the full orchestra creates many layers of sound in a rich, varied texture. At Carnegie Hall, the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa gave it a memorable performance with three absolutely magnificent soloists: American soprano Christine Goerke, English tenor Ian Bostridge, and German baritone Thomas Quasthoff, in keeping with Britten’s multinational design. Musicians and singers projected the work’s sorrow, passion, and resignation with intense, inward expressiveness; the voices of the children’s choir, positioned on an upstairs tier, truly floated down from Heaven.
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