2010-2011 Concert Season

Tokyo String Quartet (Martin Beaver, Kikuei Ikeda, violins, Kazuhide Isomura, viola, Clive Greensmith, cello)
92nd Street Y; New York, NY
October 30, 2010
With pianist Juho Pohjonen
January 22, 2011
With pianist Aleksandar Madzar
March 5, 2011
With pianist Robert Levin
Orion String Quartet (Daniel and Todd Phillips, violins, Steven Tenenbom, viola, Timothy Eddy, cello)
February 24, 2011
Mannes College of Music; New York, NY

This season, “late” Beethoven has been a strong presence on New York’s concert scene, and notable performances of his last string quartets were given by two of today’s most acclaimed chamber groups: the Tokyo and Orion String Quartets. Both have lived with these works throughout their careers, and, in these performances, again brought to them the consummate tonal, musical and ensemble perfection born of years of study and world-wide performances. Among the Tokyo’s New York appearances was a six-concert cycle to benefit the AIDS epidemic; the Orion presented a similar series to the City as a free gift to celebrate the new Millennium.

The Tokyo is performing the complete Beethoven cycle over four years at the 92nd Street Y, where it is Ensemble-in-Residence, devoting each season to one “period” of his works; this is the final year. For this series, the players are adding a new element to the programs: they are combining the quartets with important keyboard compositions of the same period to give audiences a wider perspective of Beethoven’s work. Their four guest pianists represent different nationalities, generations and styles, and include two extraordinarily talented young newcomers: Juho Pohjonen from Finland in his 92nd Street Y debut in the first concert, and Aleksndar Madzar from Belgrade in his New York debut in the second. Pohjonen, a multiple international prize-winner, chose an unusual calling card: Beethoven’s final set of Bagatelles, Op. 126. These six perfect miniatures look deceptively simple and are not outwardly effective, but require utmost control, sensitivity and subtlety. With remarkable concentration, flexibility, color and nuance, Pohjonen brought out their contrasting character, from dreamy ambiguity to fiery assertiveness, leaving an impression of superior pianism and communicative power.

Madza’s international career was launched when he won the 1996 Leeds Piano Competition. A fine pianist with a splendid but unobtrusive technique, his unfailingly beautiful, singing tone and distinctive lyrical gifts found full expression in the Sonatas Op. 109 and 110, and he handled the mood and tempo changes admirably.

In the third concert, the renowned American pianist, fortepianist and scholar Robert Levin played the Piano Sonata Op. 101 with his customary clarity and nobility; the Quartet’s cellist, Clive Greensmith, joined him for a lovely, expressive performance of the Cello Sonata Op. 102, No. 1.

The Tokyo performed the Quartet Op. 130 with the original Finale, the thorny, daunting “Great Fugue,” and the Quartets Op. 127, 132, and 135. They will close the series with Op. 131 in the fourth concert on May 7; their guest will be the brilliant young Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein in Beethoven’s last Sonata, Op. 111, and the Bagatelles Op 119.

The Orion Quartet is Ensemble-in-Residence at the Mannes College of Music, where it presents an annual concert series. Its most recent program featured Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 131, and Brahms’ Op. 51 No. 2, to show how Brahms continued Beethoven’s legacy and where he diverged from it. However, these two works revealed a sort of inverse legacy: Beethoven’s free, continuous seven-movement structure seemed far more innovative than Brahms’ traditional four movements.

The performance, as always, was distinguished by its technical and ensemble perfection, its tonal and rhythmic balance, its control, spontaneity, and its deeply felt expressiveness.

Both halls were filled to the rafters and the ovations would not stop.

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

A Quartet of… Cellists

Sometimes certain works are absent from concert programs for several years and then re-discovered by everybody simultaneously. This season may have set a record in duplications of cello sonatas: within a few weeks, Debussy’s was performed three times, and Schubert’s, Faure’s, Poulenc’s, and Prokofiev’s twice each. They were played by two audience favorites – Steven Isserlis and Timothy Eddy (whose recital was reviewed earlier) – and two strikingly talented newcomers and multiple prize winners who were making their New York debuts: Jean-Guihen Queyras and Andreas Brantelid. Moreover, Eddy’s and Brantelid’s programs were almost identical.

For many young performers, nothing seems to be more difficult than to be simple. The “Arpeggione” was the weakest part of both debut recitals; sinking under the weight of fussy tempo changes, overdone phrasing and dynamics, it lost its continuity and pensive introspection. Queyras’ playing, though technically excellent, was rather fussy altogether; his constantly delayed vibrato, fluctuating tempi and other external effects were especially distracting in a Bach Sonata and three Schubert songs not well chosen for transcription. However, in the Debussy and Poulenc Sonatas, his tonal variety and rhythmic flexibility brought out the manifold colors and character changes beautifully. He was greatly abetted by his long-time pianist Alexandre Tharaud.

Brantelid also benefited from playing with a frequent partner, the esteemed veteran pianist Bengt Forsberg. Though generally wonderfully supportive, he sometimes got carried away and played as loudly as if he were alone on the stage. Brantelid is an extraordinary cellist: his technical command, without being flashy, is so natural and secure that one forgets about it; he draws the listener into the music by the sheer power of his own identification with it. He projected Fauré’s elusiveness, Debussy’s quirky rhythms, character changes, and Prokofiev’s melting lyricism and robust earthiness, all with complete authority.

Isserlis played the Poulenc Sonata as part of a very interesting program he shared with violinist Anthony Marwood and composer/pianist Thomas Adès, whose cello and piano piece, Lieux retrouvés (Rediscovered Places) was receiving its U.S. premiere. Isserlis says he has never played anything so difficult, though the rest of the program was no less challenging. It is indeed very demanding; its figurations, diverse rhythms and sound effects, evoking water, mountains, fields and the city, require utmost virtuosity and imagination of the players. Adès, who played throughout the concert, joined Marwood in Janácek’s Violin Sonata; their affinity for his idiosyncratic, prosodic idiom, his fluid tempi and shifting emotions was remarkable. For his own work, Adès had a most persuasive advocate in Isserlis, a splendid cellist and a compelling, versatile, adventurous musician. Their performance of the Poulenc, preceded by arrangements of two sad, slow pieces by Liszt, was brilliant, full of character and contrasts, with natural, poised transitions between lyricism, assertiveness, exuberance, and irony. Finally, the three players gave a fabulous performance of Ravel’s notoriously difficult Piano Trio. Surmounting its instrumental and rhythmic hurdles with incredible ease, they captured its poetic atmosphere, changing moods and kaleidoscopic colors with total identification and unanimity.

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Cello-Piano Duos Prove Popular This Winter

Formed in 1980, the Timothy Eddy/Gilbert Kalish cello-piano duo is another remarkable collaboration. The two players are ubiquitous on the music scene: in addition to giving concerts together, they are active as soloists, chamber musicians and pedagogues. Eddy is the cellist of the Orion Quartet, in residence at Mannes, in whose intimate concert hall the Duo often presents sonata recitals. Their latest concert there—a capacity house on January 25th, 2010—featured many different styles. Classicism: Beethoven’s Variations on a Theme from Mozart’s Magic Flute, played with grace, humor, and inward expressiveness; Romanticism blended with atonality: Ben Weber’s brief Five Pieces, in which three sustained, slow, mournful character sketches are framed by two lively ones; Impressionism: Debussy’s colorful, piquant, ironic Sonata, and Fauré’s Sonata No. 2, elusive and very rarely performed, but obviously loved by these two players. After all this misty evanescence, the vigorous, earthly Prokofiev Sonata brought a sense of relief, as if the clouds had lifted and revealed solid ground under a blue sky. The players, too, seemed more relaxed, unrestrained and free, reveling in its rhythmic vitality and its full-blooded, soaring melodies, totally at one with the music and each other.

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY