Like a detonating bomb,
this performance of the Brahms roars into life with a blinding
flash and an all-consuming heat. This is incendiary Brahms, a
juggernaut of fire, smoke and glowing coals. Martha Argerich
and Lilya Zilberstein play with an unerring sense of flow for
the music’s dramatic peaks and poetic valleys, and their
naturalness and organic unity in doing so is the total opposite
of Argerich’s wooden recording with Alexandre Rabinovitch.
After hearing this searing rendition, one only wishes there
could have been a microphone present when the composer and his
friend, the fire-breathing super-virtuoso and Liszt protégé Karl
Tausig, premiered the work in 1864 to hear how it would compare
to this.
We
probably have Tausig to thank that this piece survived the
flames of Brahms’ stove, where he immolated countless works,
including a second violin concerto, a second double concerto and
who knows how much else. Brahms originally wrote this
composition as a string quartet, only to be nagged by Clara
Schumann into rewriting it as a sonata for two pianos. (To the
best of my knowledge, the quartet version has not survived.
Thanks, Clara.) Brahms and Tausig played the sonata together,
only to be scorched by sympathetic but adverse criticism.
Again, a fair amount of
the torching came from Clara. Brahms again rewrote the piece,
this time as his piano quintet. But this time, something in
Brahms must have been hardened like steel in a furnace. He not
only kept the two-piano version but also assigned it a separate
opus number. Though it is not heard as much as the piano
quartet, the two-piano sonata is worthy of far more performances
than it gets. Which brings us back to the recording at hand.
More than many
musicians, Argerich (above right) benefits or suffers from the
strenghs and weaknesses that her chamber partners bring to the
table. Zilberstein, winner of the 1987 Busoni Piano Competition
and a powerful and intuitive musician in her own right, ignites
a similarly Martha-esque flash-fire at the keyboard. More
importantly, she is very much a kindred spirit in musicality,
one who accentuates the wide range of tonal colors and intuitive
feel for the subtleties of light, shade and shadow that make
Brahms such a difficult composer to pull off convincingly.
Take
the first movement. It starts out in a fervent blaze intense
even for Brahms but quickly smolders into a deeper-hued, less
overt but no less intense ardor before shooting into tangents of
yearning, anxiety and intense introspection – all at the same
time, all with different brightnesses and darknesses of color,
gradations of tone and varieties of phrasing in a Schubertesque
layering of emotion. No one sentiment predominates for long;
everything is continually changing and intermingling in an
extreme range and
combination of highs and lows, making for one of Brahms’ most
complex, unsettled and unsettling musical statements. (Perhaps
Robert Schumann was right: This should have been the time Brahms
started writing symphonies, instead of much further – and
blander – down his career.)
Navigating through this
blazing labyrinth is not something two players can tiptoe
through timidly without having it crash down in a heap of
charred ruins on their heads. No. They have to run gamely
through it as furiously as Brahms penned it without missing a
step. This Argerich and Zilberstein (left, above) do, capturing
all the emotive deep blues, scorching reds and crackling golds
and yellows in between..
From the intense heat of
the Brahms, we enter the hothouse warmth of the Mendelssohn.
Robert Schumann raved in
some depth about this work:
" It is necessary to
say but little of Mendelssohn’s trio since it must be in
everyone’s hands. It is the master trio of today as in their day
were those of Beethoven in B-Flat and D; as was that of Franz
Schubert in E-Flat; indeed a lovely composition which years from
hence will still delight grand- and great-grand children…”
Written in 1839, the
D minor trio is one of those works in which Mendelssohn got
everything extraordinarily right – one of those pieces that, no
matter how often it is performed, you cannot really hear enough
of. More varied in tone than the violin concerto and less
serious than the symphonies (except perhaps the Italian), its
overall blitheness, charm and tunefulness are guaranteed to put
a smile on the sourest of faces.
“And now, what more
shall I say of this trio that has not been said by everyone who
has heard it? The happiest of all are those who heard it played
by its creator. Though perhaps there may be bolder virtuosos,
scarcely another than himself knows how to perform Mendelssohn’s
works with such enchanting freshness….”
Argerich
and the Capucons rise handily to Schumann’s challenge, playing
this work not just with freshness but with both the delicacy and
lightness of orchids and the right amount of sunniness and warmth
those flowers need not only to survive, but to thrive.
Argerich is both bold and enchanting, making the less heated
sections of the molto allegro dance with fleet fingers,
an unerring feel for the springiness of Mendelssohn’s rhythms
and an intoxicating air of romantic bliss.
“I need hardly
mention that this trio is not written for the piano player
alone; that the two others also must do their part and may
depend upon delight and thanks. So let the new work have its
effect everywhere, as it should have, and prove anew to us the
artistic power of its creator. This now appears to be in fullest
flower."
The opening notes of
Gautier Capucon’s lush opening solo announces this performance
as one emphasizing the temperate romanticism of the composer
over the cooler classical side – no sin here by any means. This
is truly a melding of spirits, with Argerich sometimes taking
the lead but never dominating the proceedings. There is a
wonderful sense of give-and-take and oneness throughout this
piece, from the dancelike first movement into the light lyricism
of the Songs Without Words permeating the andante. They
revel on the elfin lightness of the scherzo, not as a mad dash
but as the giddy cheerfulness of children running and playing at
full-tilt, and their fiery romp through the finale carries you
off with its gypsy-like abandon. More of Argerich and the
Capucons, please!
