Creating the context…
Johannes Brahms is often named as one of music’s gifted “three B’s.” But his musical genius was not isolated. It was stoked by Bach’s gift for counterpoint, Haydn’s wit, Mozart’s breathtaking lyricism, Beethoven’s daring and power, and Robert and Clara Schumann’s romantic intensity, along with a host of others. And he in turn influenced generations of composers.
This year Music@Menlo, the peninsula’s renowned chamber music festival, celebrates its ninth season by exploring Western music through a Brahmsian lens. Founders and artistic directors Wu Han and David Finckel have programmed a series of six concerts, along with four lectures and many “prelude concerts” featuring artists in the educational half of their festival.
“Brahms the Prismatic,” the second concert, reached back to Bach, whom Brahms studied deeply, and forward to Rachmaninov, Schoenberg and Harbison in a colorful concert that aired Tuesday, July 26, at the Center for the Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton.
Laurence Lesser took the stage for J. S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2, a crowd pleaser displaying Bach’s delicate steel, and played by a president-emeritus of the New England Conservatory. That match of educator-cellist and baroque elegance did not cloud the fiendish difficulty of these cello solos. Based on dances, the fast fingering and deeply bowed chords were easier to play on the period instruments of Bach’s era, like the viola da gamba, which was fretted like a guitar. And gut strings, rather than steel, and a less tensioned bow made chords far easier to play.
But Lesser’s performance on a beautiful old cello with modern strings and bow gave us a resonance we could happily drown in. He gave particularly deep feeling to the slow Sarabande, pulling bass notes out of the earth in this graceful dance with death.
The highlight of the night was long time Piedmont resident Ian Swensen, a reminder of our fortune in having a violinist of this caliber in the East Bay. He first performed Arnold Schoenberg’s Phantasy for Violin and Piano, Op. 47 accompanied by Lucille Chung, a work very different from Bach or Brahms, but with intriguing parallels. Schoenberg, though he abandoned Western key signatures for serialism, authored a classic on harmonic language—and owes a debt to Brahms, whom he greatly admired, for forging that path. Written towards the end of Schoenberg’s life, this work’s virtuosity and daring paid homage to that august lineage—and offered us a palate cleanser for fugues and florid romanticism!
The violin entered with a powerful sense of striving. And then reversed itself for beseeching phrases that devolved into slippery double stops. Swensen was brilliant, combining richness in every note with a plaintive undertow. Chung commented with a watery trickle or sharp little question, back-scoring a violin’s temper, which, though moody, placed every note with power, like pebbles in a game of go.
Swensen returned for Sergei Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, another facet of Brahms’ prismatic effect on later composers, and one that couldn’t be more different. Swensen’s lower register was compelling, forging Russian beauty out of loss and bending pitches with gypsy flavor. Alessio Bax accompanied on piano with gentle chords.
At intermission I congratulated Swensen.
“How did you like it?” he asked.
“I loved it. It was huge,” I answered.
“This was the first time I played the Schoenberg, the first time I played the Vocalise. And until three days ago I thought I was first violin on the Harbison.”
The direct immediacy of his playing reminded me of a question.
“The Schoenberg is very cerebral. How do you put it in your body? It’s not a Sarabande,” I said, referrin
g to the Bach cello dance.
“ It is in the body. It’s very Viennese, a very complex dance. It’s definitely in the body.”
That visceral connection brought feeling to a work that is challenging for listener and performer alike.
Closing out the set, living composer John Harbison wrote of the spaciousness of Georgia O’Keefe’s canvases. O’Keefe filled those New Mexico distances with a deep sexuality and an overpowering immersion in the moment. In Piano Quintet, which he dedicates to O’Keefe, Harbison creates that dimension through textural dissonance and long passages that hover between lyrical and serial. Over this he weaves viola solos, lushly romantic in the third movement, and a violin solo in the final Elegia. Yura Lee was an impeccable warrior in the viola part, and Jorja Fleezanis held her own in a violin’s thin stratosphere.
…and then the Brahms.
Brahms originally wrote his Sonata in F Minor, Op. 34b for piano and string quartet before retooling it for four-hands piano, a move much appreciated in middle-class German homes, many of which had a piano. But still unsatisfied, he reworked it again for piano and strings. While the quartet offers more insight into his melodic strands, the two pianos illumine Brahms’ harmonic development,
Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung collaborated on that piano version, a feat of endurance that requires the closest cooperation. But while they kept the energy up through the long sonata and negotiated a tight tempo, their approaches were too different for an entirely successful venture.
Rather than share one piano bench, they played on separate facing pianos that “spooned” together, with Chung in the back playing the upper register with her lid all the way up and Bax in front on the bass notes with his lid down so as not to baffle her sound.
Bax stroked the keyboard with rounded chords and a gentle power, channeling Brahms’ romantic impulses and building long phrases. Contrastingly, Chung’s attacks were diamond sharp and her peddling incisive, an approach that may have suited a complex modern work, but it tolled a death knell to romanticism. Somebody behind me also saw this and commented out loud, “They should change places.” Indeed, Bax on the upper register with the lid up would have covered up the bass—and their different approaches.
This was a surprising outcome for such excellent pianists. But it is probably not uncommon for this work, and may be why the quintet version is more often programmed.
—Adam Broner
Photo of Ian Swensen, violin and Alessio Bax, piano; photo by Tristan Cook.
Music@Menlo continues with programs each night, and the final concert, Program VI, airs Friday Aug. 12 and Saturday Aug. 13. The last lecture, “Music in Autumn: The Late Works of Brahms” led by Ara Guzelimian, will be at 7:30 on Thursday Aug. 11. More information available at musicatmenlo.org.