As fate had it, the violinists Joshua Bell and Anne-Sophie Mutter gave
recitals in New York on consecutive January nights.
As fate has also
had it, they are about the same age (Bell is thirty-two, Mutter
thirty-six), they were famous as teenagers, and they have large and
enthusiastic followings. They seem destined to be compared, or at least
jointly discussed.
For most of their careers, Mutter has had the greater reputation. A
German, she was taken up by the late conductor Herbert von Karajan, who
engaged her at the Salzburg Festival when she was thirteen. Bell
is a Hoosier, who grew up in Bloomington and studied
with Josef Gingold, the late, well-loved violinist and pedagogue. Bell
made his initial splash when he played with the Philadelphia Orchestra
at fourteen. If Mutter was ever the more mature and impressive
violinist, Bell has more than caught up. In a small crowd of excellent
violinists under forty, Bell, with every passing year, stands
out—although Mutter is hardly back in the shadows.
Bell gave his recital at Alice Tully Hall, with the pianist Frederic
Chiu, an American of Chinese parentage who has made his mark with
a recording of the complete works for piano of Prokofiev. They began
with Copland’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, a lovely and engaging work
that represents the composer in a relaxed and thoughtful pose. Bell
instantly had the attention of his audience, with confident and
authoritative playing. One could be at ease in one’s seat with
him—there would not be errors or interpretive foolishness. His intonation
was secure. He played simply, straightforwardly, with a modesty that
becomes this sort of music, and, really, all music. The demand here is
to allow the score to be transparent, which Bell did. The Coplandian
intervals
—stamped on the work like a signature—
were clear and
unforced. This was alert and rhythmically intelligent playing, with the
violinist respecting the notes on the page and taking no undue
liberties—one could easily have transcribed the piece from this performance.
At the beginning of the Lento movement came single strokes, perfectly
inflected. Here, too, Bell was refreshingly simple (’tis a gift to
be). Never was there a hint of excess or affectation. The final
Allegretto was sprightly and well articulated. Bell—in another mark
of the judicious musician—
knows which notes are to be accented and
which are not. His forte playing was bracing and resolute, with some
warmth in it, but still bright, not soppy. Bell’s tone is, in fact,
admirably adaptable, as in the best string playing. It can be
crystalline or buttery—his choice, or, rather, the music’s. He always
seems to do what he should, offering this color or that, giving more
vibrato or less, as the situation dictates. He is also a good manager
of music, and might—for this and other reasons—make a fine
conductor, if he so chose.
The second work on the program was another twentieth-century sonata, of
a starkly different character—Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor.
Bell’s account of it was etched with modernist precision. Beauty is not
necessarily the point in this music,
as Bell well knows. He also knows
that Prokofiev requires a measure of coldness, and a martial feeling,
and some mystery, and even a bit of insanity. His playing was severe
and angular, in the Russian style. Indeed, he was as Russian in his
Prokofiev as he was American in his Copland. His “off-the-bow” runs
were gossamer, yet true and distinguishable. Of any rhythmic
complexity, he was, again, the master. In the Andante, Bell achieved an
astonishing, muted beauty; his playing was otherworldly, nimble, and
aware. His trills were fluttering or taut, snarling or spooky; his
pianos were ghostly. It seems that nothing is beyond his ability to
convey. Though his technique is not flashy or ostentatious, he always
seems to have enough.
After intermission came Bartók’s First Rhapsody for Violin and Piano
(“Folk Dances”), a work that is usually played with orchestra but was
done here in its original form. There is, of course, a touch of the
gypsy in every violinist, and Bell has a healthy dose of it. In this
appealing piece, he provided a nice contrast between the raucous and the
sweet. Simplicity, once more, served him well, with not a note or a
dynamic wasted. There is dance in his bow. He can sing blithely, and
he can tear up the strings with virtuosity.
To end the program was the Ravel sonata, the least frequently
heard of the great and beloved French sonatas (the others being the
Fauré, the Debussy, and the Franck—
and let there be no complaining
that Franck was, in fact, a Belgian). Here, Bell was pure and
correct, producing a sublime cantabile. It takes technique to put an
audience in impressionistic dreamland, and this he did—
but with a
hidden technique, devoid of artifice, enabling honesty of expression.
The final movement, Perpetuum mobile, was infused with a constant (well,
perpetual) energy, and Bell’s loose (read: relaxed and supple)
technique resulted in a thrillingly tight performance—one of the great
paradoxes of musical technique.
Bell, who enjoyed superb training, has the unteachable: musical
judgment, taste. The repertory of the violin is vast, and he can play
all of it, with no specialty or deficiency. He recalls a violinist of a
past generation, Zino Francescatti, the impeccable Frenchman with the
lilting Italian name. Bell, like him, is something better than a
violinist: He is a musician. He is also one of the most underrated
performers, critically, before the public today, a condition that can
hardly last forever.
The following night, it was Mutter’s turn. She was in town for a
month-long “residency,” as concert organizations have taken to calling
such extended stays, including six performances with the New York
Philharmonic and two recitals in Carnegie Hall, of which this was the
first. Accompanying her was the pianist Lambert Orkis, an amiable
American known for his puckish comments from the stage and his advocacy
of contemporary music. They began with Webern’s Four Pieces for Violin
and Piano, written in 1910, but seeming as modern and radical as
anything composed this morning. Mutter, too, is proud to be a champion
of new music, and the works commissioned by or for her come fast and
furiously.
In the Webern, Mutter showed that she deserves her reputation as a
skillful proponent of the modern. Her tone was well adapted to the
music—wan, disembodied, bleak. Webern sought to be as spare as
possible in his writing, and Mutter’s playing reflected that spirit.
She has an obvious affinity for this music, which helps to bring others
along, even when they may be reluctant. In the first minutes of her
recital, she succeeded in creating a distinctive and unusual
atmosphere—an achievement.
The Respighi violin sonata lies outside the major repertory, and not
without reason: blowzy with romantic effusions, it is not especially
distinguished. Mutter employed her characteristic sound, which is
pleasant, thin-ribboned, and slightly watery. She achieved some
ethereal pianissimos. But, as is often the case with her, this was
competent playing that did not rise to the remarkable or memorable. She
failed to lend to the piece much character, which was perhaps not entirely
her fault. The sonata is episodic, overwrought, and melodramatic. It
may be thought of as Liszt for the violin
—full of bombast, albeit
pretty-sounding at times. Respighi even ends with a tremolo for
the piano, as if in tribute to Liszt, the king of the tremolo and other
vulgar musical gestures.
The second half of the program opened with a work by George Crumb, his
Four Nocturnes for Violin and Piano (Night Music
II) (Crumb is a big
one for dual titles). Orkis made an appeal from the stage before the
two began the piece, begging for silence from an audience that had
shaken the roof with its coughing. This is—Orkis was not wrong to
beseech—a quiet and disquieting work, tranquil and jarring. It
involves the typical Crumbian tricks: The pianist leans into the belly
of his instrument, plucking and strumming the strings; the violinist
also plucks and strums, in addition to hitting and rubbing. The duo
performed this work with utmost respect and not a little effectiveness,
and the composer—robust and beaming—was on hand to receive his
share of applause.
Mutter, like Bell, waded into Bartók, although that composer’s Violin
Sonata No. 2, forbidding and cerebral, bears little resemblance
to the friendly Rhapsody. Mutter acquitted herself well, giving the
sonata a drive, an inexorability. Like her counterpart from Indiana,
she has good rhythmic sense,
and ample technique. Yet she is sometimes
guilty of dull playing, even if it is otherwise unobjectionable. It is
hard to fault her specifically—she is an able violinist by any fair
standard—but one often finds oneself hoping that she will catch a gust
of inspiration.
Last on the printed program was Ravel’s popular Tzigane
(meaning “gypsy”), which Mutter lit into at an unusually fast
clip. On the whole, she was commanding, if a bit wobbly in
spots. She produced a pleasingly rough sound; she put just the
right amount of throb in her vibrato (she, too, has gypsy in her
hands); her octaves were clean and well weighted. But, in
contrast to Bell, one could not entirely relax with her, trusting
that all would be well: One had to look out for bumps, dips, and
hiccups. Mutter lost refinement in the upper register, and she
was occasionally pinched, lacking flexibility and freedom. She
managed to complete her task, as she always does, but it seems
more an effort than is perhaps desirable. She is a capable
violinist, and even an excellent one, but she is not—not yet, at
least—a transcendent, enthralling one. She survives a
performance, when an immortal would triumph or transform in it. Her
sole encore was more Ravel, the Habanera, which she dispatched
limply and indifferently.
We are, let us rejoice, rich in violinists, even in quite young ones.
There is Maxim Vengerov (age twenty-five), Gil Shaham (twenty-eight),
Midori (one name, please, and she is twenty-seven), and the bedazzling
Hilary Hahn, who at only nineteen is already a deeply satisfying
violinist. In this group, Joshua Bell and Anne-Sophie Mutter seem
senior statesmen. They will presumably continue to grow in wisdom and
ability. But they have already accomplished, in their twenty-year
careers, a fair amount
—and this is especially true of the relatively
unsung one from the great Midwest.
Notes
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Joshua Bell appeared at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, on
January 9; Anne-Sophie Mutter appeared at Carnegie Hall on
January 10.
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