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RECITAL REVIEW
A Very Different Virtuso,
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By Michelle Dulak
At his Herbst Theater recital Tuesday, the violinist Joshua Bell stood apart from his peers by his very reticence. He does not have, for example, the intense, rich, high-calorie tone with which other top-flight virtuosi fascinate their audiences. Nor can he match a number of them in sheer ease and cleanness of passage-work. His technique is very fine but not immaculate, and the naked ferocity (made possible by absolute technical security) with which some of the younger players attack their music is not really one of his options.
Bell has his own stock of technical miracles--less flashy than the standard article, but in their own way, perfectly astonishing. Who else can use the upper reaches of the lower strings quite like this? It was not so much Bell's facility that was stunning (plenty of violinists can move around up there with similar ease), but the tone itself--clear and free, with nothing of the usual hoarse tension in it. Given a short, repeated motif, he would play the first time on the A string, the second high up on the D, not only with achingly pure intonation but with the merest subtle contrast in tone color.
The program, a mingling of solemn and frivolous, gritty and light, revealed a violinistic personality basically austere and even cold, yet still capable of intense passion. Opening with one of Schubert's three sonatinas was a substantial risk. These are short and slight pieces, and Bell chose the shortest and slightest of the three--No. 1, in D. A truly individual tone and an idiosyncratic elegance can make them come alive; anything short of that, and they look--well, small. Bell's oddly finicky sound--the fast, narrow vibrato flickering in and out note by note--was not the arresting tonal personality the music needed. There were breathtaking moments, to be sure (the minore section of the middle slow movement was one long, exquisitely extended line, carried by Bell's extraordinary legato). But there was a discipline in the playing that prevented its ever seeming quite natural. It sang, as it were, only beneath its speech.
Op. 30/2, the C-minor, is Beethoven's most blustery violin sonata. The cool elegance that Bell supplied for the Schubert wouldn't do here, and indeed his reading was full of fire. Fire, that is, but not warmth. The passion was palpable, but also controlled and somehow impersonal. Every gesture was calculated, in the closest collaboration with his pianist (the excellent Simon Mulligan, a young Englishman). There was a great deal of the stage in the interpretation--the intimately crafted blocking, the precisely calibrated effect--but strangely little theater. Bell never dared actually to speak in a whisper. Even the quietest of his utterances were plainly projected out to the audience. It was a brilliant performance, but one that slurred over certain possibilities in the music.
The second half of the recital was something else again. In this more extroverted music, by Bartok, Gershwin, and Wieniawski, Bell revealed a flair for drama and for showmanship that was hard to hear in the Schubert and the Beethoven.
Here the coloristic possibilities of Bell's tone first became clear. His formerly regular (if intermittent) vibrato became almost hysterically variable, careening from one vivid color to the next. His bowing was a riot of bold and sweeping gestures.
Bartok's First Rhapsody and (even more) his Rumanian Dances revealed a violinist with near-miraculous control over color and nuance. The supremely confident swagger of the opening of the Rhapsody was impressive enough, but the Rumanian Dances showcased a range of voices that the Rhapsody could not--not just the earthy, instinctively physical kind of dance, but a kind of sly elegance as well. And then the insinuating whisper of the one dance all in artificial harmonics-performed by Bell with haunting ease, sounding like a reed flute rather than a bowed instrument.
Next were Gershwin's Three Preludes, in Heifetz's transcriptions. In Bell's hands they were seething, slithery, red-hot musical serpents, tense with coiled energy even when (as in the central Prelude) the surface of the music was calm.
Finally, there was the piece Bell announced onstage (at the beginning of the second half) as "an encore, whether you like it or not." He added that it was by Wieniawski; but those of us expecting one of the obvious Wieniawski encore pieces (a Polonaise or a Scherzo-Tarantelle) were pleasantly surprised. It was one of the composer's daffier extended works, the Variations on an Original Theme. Bell's bravado more than made up for any weak patches in the virtuoso filigree--and truth to tell, there weren't very many of those. The Wieniawski was a nonstop hoot, one calculated to startle even hardened critical curmudgeons (those to whom the Wieniawski must have looked like a throwback to the bad old days of fluffy recitals) into--well, honest enjoyment.
(Michelle Dulak is a violinist and violist who has written about music for "Strings," "Stagebill," "Early Music America" and The New York Times.)
©1999 Michelle Dulak, all rights reserved
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