San Francisco Classical Voice

Four huge musical personalities and superstars walked onto Davies Hall stage Thursday night and surprisingly transformed themselves into one of chamber music's most homogeneous forms, the piano quartet, in the process often igniting arcs of joy and splendor.

The event was an evening of chamber music sponsored by the San Francisco Symphony and featuring Isaac Stern, violin, Jaime Laredo, viola, Yo-yo Ma, cello, and Emanuel Ax, piano, performing before an ecstatic, standing room-only audience. Their program consisted of three pieces: Mozart's Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493, Schumann's Quartet op. 47 in the same key, and Brahms' Quartet in C Minor, op. 60.

In piano/string chamber music, the varying types of the groups make for fascinatingly different experiences for both performer and listener. The piano trio (piano, violin, and cello) is small enough that the players have freedom to be individual personalities yet still merge into a precise ensemble. By contrast, piano quintets become in essence a cohesive string quartet playing with or against an additional personality (the pianist). That ensemble experience is larger, powerful, but usually not as keen or as intimate as the others. In the middle of this spectrum,the piano quartet offers perhaps the purest chamber music experience.

In this piano quartet recital, how would four such strong musical characters, all famous soloists as well as chamber players, tilt the equation? The gratifying answer is that these artists skillfully guided their ego-heavy ship through waters that could have sunk lesser sailors, and they did it with grace, humor, and passion. The problems of ensemble, balance, and direction with which chamber groups struggle and over which they sometimes founder were simply taken for granted and leapt over by these players.

Yes, Virginia, there is an Isaac Stern and he can still play the fiddle. Despite occasional lapses of pitch and playing not as strong and sure as it once was, Stern's timing was often enchanting. He demonstrated that he is capable of impassioned playing and rich sound. And his frequent no-frills approach was also illuminating, as in the cool, almost casual solo at the beginning of the fourth movement of the Brahms.

The concert progressed from very good to better, as if the players were warming up or reaching more hospitable terrain. The Mozart was often elegant, although there seemed a slight self-consciousness about the whole thing that didn't let it sound easy or simple enough. At the very opening Stern seemed too shy about his high A flat, and again when the music was repeated. This may have been a deliberate decision based on the round chordal texture. Ma and Laredo overplayed their duets in the last movement. Ax tended to rush to the conclusion of his difficult triplet-figure runs, as if sliding into home plate. But this is nitpicking in the face of such generally graceful and beautiful playing.

The Schumann was more focused and quite excitingly played, perhaps because it presented more specific difficulties and dangers to the players (Ma certainly smiled much less frequently). In places the music was a bit rough, as Schumann should be, and the players attacked with courage. Though the scherzo (a quasi-perpetual motion) felt like it might veer out of control, it never did (an ideal state for this piece) and was absolutely thrilling. The Andante cantabile was riveting due to the incredible singing of Ax, Laredo, and Ma.

The evening's true heroes were Ax and Laredo. They created the musical glue (and often transcendent beauty) that held these performances together. Though I question the two large broadenings of tempo near the end of the finale (both seemed messy and exaggerated), that certainly didn't dim the joy and greatness of spirit that infused this performance.

The Brahms C Minor Quartet, a great tragic utterance, was even more fluent idiomatically. I was startled by the aggressiveness of the opening piano octaves, but the rest of the performance put them in believable perspective. The ensuing, bitter scherzo was solid, heroic, and altogether finely played. The third movement Andante was searing, aching, beautiful in every way, although Ma came close to overplaying his opening solo. It was devastatingly beautiful, but so intense, concerto-style, that what came afterwards was almost anticlimactic. The fourth movement came to a noble conclusion with a startlingly big piano summation.

This was all skilled chamber playing, but much more: an amazing evening with four large and distinct musical personalities and a moving integration of younger and older players, with all the attendant wisdom and varieties of experience.

(Mack McCray is a concert pianist and a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.)

©2000 Mack McCray, all rights reserved