Juilliard Chamber Music: Vivaldi, Brahms, Ohanessian and Beethoven

I took advantage of the sunny weather on Sunday afternoon - the first in several days - and went to the one o'clock chamber music recital at Morse Hall.  It turned out to be a full length performance that featured the works  of Vivaldi, Brahms, Beatrice Ohanessian and Beethoven.

The program opened with two pieces by Vivaldi, the Sonata for Violin and Cembalo in G minor, RV 27, and the Concerto for Lute in D major, RV 93.  Both pieces had been transcribed by the two performers, Andrea Fortier, viola, and Alberta Khoury, guitar, for their respective instruments.  Their coach was the violinist Lara Lev.  The RV 27 was the first of the twelve violin sonatas that comprise Vivaldi's Op. 2 and was composed in 1709, the same year the entire set was first published by Antonio Bortolio.  The RV 93, written in 1730, was a much later work written while Vivaldi was visiting Prague.  The most affecting movement in the latter piece was the second, marked largo, distinguished by its shifts in meter.  I thought the arrangements were very well done and sounded quite natural when played on viola and guitar.

The next work was Brahms's Cello Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99 (1886).  The musicians, who had been coached by Joel Krosnick and Catherine Cho, were YiQun Xu, cello, and Yandi Chen, piano.  The Op. 99 was written when Brahms was already 53 years old but so romantic is it in character, especially in the tender second movement adagio affettuoso, that it sounds like the work of a much younger composer.  In this respect it resembles the other works, the Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 101 and the Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 100, written during this same summer holiday that Brahms spent happily in Hofstetten near Lake Thun in Switzerland.  For whatever reason (Brahms had written to his friend Max Kalbeck, "I'd also just mention that there's a ton of Biergartens...) the surroundings must have made Brahms feel like a young man again.  He was able to put aside the fussy perfectionism that caused him to obsessively labor over his music, often to its detriment, and instead to indulge in the spontaneity that is at the heart of the Romantic ethos.  Perhaps as Brahms entered his late period he finally gained enough confidence in his abilities, after years spent hearing the footsteps of Beethoven behind him, that he was finally able to enjoy himself.  One can almost hear him humming to himself as he composed this work.

After intermission the program continued with a single movement solo piano work entitled The Dawn that had been written by Beatrice Ohanessian, an Iraqi composer of Armenian descent.  I have to admit I had never heard of this composer before attending the recital and had to do some research afterwards just to find out who she was.  Her biography, as set forth in Wikipedia, gives no indication of the difficulties she faced in working in Hussein's Iraq but they must have been considerable.  The work performed, about fifteen minutes in length, was complex and appeared technically demanding, though pianist Wenting Shi handled it with great confidence and virtuosity.

The program concluded with Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 18, No. 6 (1801).  The performers were Bomsori Kim and Dasol Jeong, violins; Hahnsol Kim, viola; and Nathan Chan, cello.  Their coach on this piece was the cellist Timothy Eddy of the Orion Quartet.  The quartet was composed near the end of Beethoven's Early Period and, though it would still be some time before he wrote his famous Heiligenstadt Testament, it's clear from the last movement that he was already experiencing the depression over his loss of hearing that would eventually lead him away from the Classical style toward the brooding introspection that characterized his Middle Period.  This movement, titled La Malinconia, marked a turning point in Beethoven's artistry.  True, he had not yet resolved to heroically overcome his affliction but was at this point still attempting to come to terms with it.  And yet the decision to express his feelings so explicitly in a musical work (he marked the score "Questo pezzo si deve trattare colla più gran delicatezza") was unprecedented in his oeuvre and effectively removed him from the tradition of  Haydn and Mozart.  The return to a more upbeat mood in the allegretto that closes the work is not at all convincing, but the listener senses that it was not intended to be.  It is as if Beethoven were putting on a brave face for form's sake but wanted to make it clear to all that his heart was not really in the gesture.