A Bloodless Approach to the Classics

For some of us, the term “early music” can refer to the accompaniment to Javanese shadow puppets or the soundings of the shofar in a temple, but in Western academic circles it has come to mean roughly the more formal compositions from the Medieval period through the Rococo: the grounding of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. As a genre, early music did not even exist 30 years ago; today it is all the rage.New York is in the midst of a festive compendium of the stuff, known as the early music celebration. Many different venues are participating, including City Opera with its revival of the problematic Platee. The Frick Collection weighed in with its own contribution on Sunday, a concert that pushed the envelope of musical boundaries just a tad, presenting mainstream music of the Classical period as if it were a bit earlier than it actually was. They did so, however, in a convincing manner by employing the somewhat forgotten fortepiano.Perhaps the biggest “discovery” of this penchant for musical archaeology is this precursor of the pianoforte. Virtually all of us have matured with the resonance of the grand Steinway in our ears; how could Beethoven possibly exist without 88 keys of powerful, reverberant sound? Yet for sheer beauty and clarity, just listen to a Melvyn Tan recording of one of those titanic concerti on this more delicate, less overtonally dependent, instrument.The Frick is just about the ideal venue for this type of small chamber effort. A rather dark but dignified round room, it is adorned with Dutch tapestries from about 50 years before Haydn’s ascendancy. It also boasts three Fragonard panels painted in the exact year of Mozart’s death. Tickets are free and the room is compact – only 10 rows of seats – so crowd control is challenging. But the staff handles it with a good deal of grace and good humor. Hearing Haydn in this opulent setting makes one feel positively like an Esterhazy.The concert, by the piano trio known as the Mozartean Players, was a mixed affair. The Great Leap Backward of the period instrument crowd is the banishment of vibrato, a vacuum still somewhat jarring to modern ears and open to much debate as to its benighted qualities of “authenticity.” Certainly there was much to be praised in this particular effort. Tempi were uniformly brisk, and repeats were often excised: Everything moved along at a rapid pace. These three men were exceptionally well coordinated as a unit. It was heartening to observe how closely they listened to one another.What they heard, however, was often far from what was written on the original page. Violinist Stanley Ritchie missed an inordinate amount of notes in both the Haydn and Mozart trios, and he suffers from the bad habit of lingering on individual tones so that they interfere with his next utterance. The overall effect of these approximations was often slovenliness. Cellist Myron Lutzke was much more precise and is apparently the heretic of the group, waggling his left hand occasionally to produce the dreaded vibrations demonized by his mates. Fortepianist Steven Lubin, performing on the one instrument that really cannot produce vibrato, was the most accuracy-challenged of all, relying on many improvisatory chords, some of which were exceptionally dissonant and unwelcome, at the moments of his distraction created by the turning of every page.Mr. Lubin proved his scholarly credentials by performing a solo piece of his own arrangement of the Variations in F, Hob. XVII: 6 of Haydn. The piece as revised is very powerful, but perhaps this particular fortepianist is not the best exponent of his own intellectual skills, especially since it is very difficult to mask so many mistakes without the aid of modern pedals.This whole somewhat bloodless approach to the classics is hard to communicate properly in an era when decibel level and musical quality seem to be irrevocably linked in the imagination of the audience. Sometimes, a period chamber concert can be downright disconcerting, especially when the fortepiano does not take the lead in the strident manner to which we have become accustomed in Beethoven (this group played the Op. 1 No. 2 trio). Much can be recouped by performing these shrunken treasures on the finest of stringed instruments. This is the strength, say, of the concerts at the Smithsonian. Unfortunately on this Sunday afternoon, we all had to settle for reproductions that were a far cry from those creamy masterpieces of Cremona.To thoroughly make the case for period instrumental style as a valid approach to the Classical repertoire as a new – albeit old – way of performance requires a group whose technical skills are beyond reproach and whose sound is especially satisfying. At least on this particular day, the Mozartean Players were simply not that ensemble.

A Bloodless Approach to the Classics

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