Brahms: The Original Kurt Cobain

Although it would be logical when listening to the Brahms C Minor Piano Quartet, which was presented at the Juilliard School on Friday evening by Ensemble ACJW, to think of the Schumann Piano Quartet on which it is modeled, for the past dozen years or so the piece of music that invariably comes to my mind is the Nirvana song “Something in the Way.” The Brahms is a unique work; two movements, written when the composer was a young man, consist of passionate music about suicide, and two movements, penned 20 years later, contain mature reflection on love and the passage of time. What Kurt Cobain expressed in his song about the inexorability of life is remarkably similar to the thoughts of Brahms concerning self-destruction.There is a special thrill in hearing young people perform this work. The quartet this night (Joanna Kaczorowska, violin, Meena M. Bhasin, viola, Julia MacLaine, cello, and Angelina Gadeliya, piano) was remarkably in sync, so much so that at first I was a bit skeptical about the quality of this performance. Brahms sets up his extremely dramatic scene of the man at the precipice — he even asked his publisher to include a cover page with a painting of Werther about to do himself in — with some rather tentative opening passages. These were well played by the group but did not foretell the intensity of the remainder of the Allegro non troppo movement.Once the Sturm und Drang took over, the foursome was in deep abandon. This was an impressively febrile rendition that did not sacrifice good taste or accuracy for extreme emotional communication. Accents were strong and vital, bowings heartily endowed with power. Ms. Gadeliya dominated as we are told Brahms used to, her piano sound rich and resonant, dark and confident throughout. For sheer depth of feeling, this was one of the most striking performances in New York this entire season.The third movement, the Andante, was also notable for its sensitive utterances. Ms. MacLaine was granted what is arguably the most beautiful and affecting melody in all of Brahms at the commencement of the movement and nailed it with a rather brisk tempo and a strong vibrato. All four instrumentalists were superb in this shimmering tone poem, although the aggregate string sound was a bit thin, indicative perhaps more of the quality of the instruments in use than the players who employed them. Again Ms. Gadeliya emerged as the strongest phrasemaker, although in the final, deeply moving, descending passage — what Robert Haven Schauffler, in his wonderful book “The Unknown Brahms,” calls “the incomparable summary of the last page” — I wished for a longer pause before the penultimate note.Ultimately the quartet is a journey from the depths of youthful despair to the plateau of mature understanding, not able to quite sustain the glorious heights of physical and spiritual love but also soundly rejecting the abyss as a final outcome. To listen to a work such as this at the beginning of the 21st century is to experience a reassuring continuity between the great artists of the past and the plight of the youth of the present. What Brahms and Clara Schumann felt in the 1850s is alive today. Plus ça change …After a delightful Flute Quartet of Mozart, the players presented a rarity: two pieces by the German-American composer Charles Martin Loeffler. This was a very fine performance of music in that perfumed fin de siècle style that introduced a hint of Orientalism. The vocabulary was that of Rimsky-Korsakov with a nod toward the Gallic — although a Prussian by birth, Loeffler, who sat at the first violin desk of the Boston Symphony for almost 20 years, attempted all of his life to convince his peers that he was Alsatian.The two aural vignettes, played lovingly by oboist Arthur Sato, violist Brenton Caldwell, and pianist Elizabeth Joy Roe, were based on poems by Maurice Rollinat that had been translated by noted Boston newspaper critic Philip Hale. The inclusion of Hale on this program was deliciously ironic, as he wrote in the first decade of the 20th century that the new Boston Symphony Hall should have inscribed over its door the warning, “Exit in Case of Brahms.” Those of us who did not heed his advice were treated to quite a moving experience.* * *After pianist Vassily Primakov won the William Petschek award at Juilliard, I covered his 2001 recital at Alice Tully Hall for a Parisian publication. He exhibited much more than superb technique at that event, impressing especially with his maturity and strong sense of musical architecture, particularly in the slow movement of the Sonata No. 2 of Rachmaninoff. On Thursday, Mr. Primakov presented an all-Beethoven program at Trinity Church.What has improved in the past seven years? Well, Mr. Primakov seemed more confident this day, producing only a negligible number of inaccurate utterances. He took the measure of the Sonata No. 9 but ignored a potential problem at his peril.The CD that Mr. Primakov recently released of the piece is considerably cleaner than this live performance, primarily because the artist did not adjust properly to the idiosyncratic acoustical conditions of the church. It is tempting to state that he rode the sustaining pedal too often, but this might not have been true had he been at Carnegie Hall. However, in the reverberating atmosphere of Trinity, many of his phrases were rather gooey. I moved about the church during this recital, looking for the ideal seat or spot on which to stand, but there were always echoes of muddiness emanating from the stage. By contrast, this is not always the case with piano recitals here.A new feature at Trinity is the placement of large-screen televisions about the place. The recitals are Webcast live over the Internet and so require at least an elementary camera exploration. As I traversed the auditorium it was interesting to observe Mr. Primakov’s fingers in close-up, the kind of view that patrons at Carnegie Hall pay handsomely for the opportunity to experience.In the “Moonlight” Sonata, Mr. Primakov communicated the overall sense of the piece, but did not fully exploit its poetic qualities. The famous opening sounded a bit mechanical, the mystery and exquisite gossamer quality subsumed by metronomic routine. Had he still been the student, this might have seemed like gingerly play, careful to a fault. Coming from a young professional, however, it simply felt clichéd.The Presto agitato was undeniably exciting, but Mr. Primakov showed himself to be somewhat of a pounder. The acoustical challenge led to a degree of muddiness here, but Mr. Primakov’s strong accents and thoughtful dynamics carried the day. A rather large number of listeners departed after this piece, but chalk that up to the informality of a free concert.Mr. Primakov ended as Beethoven did, with the Sonata No. 32 (also on his new CD). This was the most successful of the three readings, strongly dramatic and colorful, with mature techniques of light and shade. Clearly, there is great potential here. With any luck, there will be no need to wait another seven years to hear him again.

Brahms: The Original Kurt Cobain

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