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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
Rebecca Rust Friedrich Edelmann Vera Breheda October 6, 2006
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Perfect Pairings By Jerry Kuderna
The Georgi Gallery in Berkeley has long been known for presenting art and music that might be called “the untried and true.” The concert on Friday night featured a Bay Area native, cellist Rebecca Rust, and her husband, bassoonist Friedrich Edelmann. Collectively known as the Mozart Duo, they now reside in Germany and have been touring internationally with a colleague from their student days, pianist Vera Breheda. They demonstrated that it doesn’t take an evening of masterworks to provide pleasure. In a judicious sampling of styles and periods, they offered an evening of music-making that was provocative, professional, and occasionally profound.
As a duo, Rust and Edelmann produced sound that was strikingly full and balanced. From the first notes of the sprightly Boccherini Sonata in C, you could feel their sense of power and command. They filled the Georgi Gallery with a sound that was arresting in its sensuality and frankly romantic in its expression — the subdued, reticent sound of two instruments graciously taking turns at melody and accompaniment. At the time it was composed, the sonata was in its infancy, and it would come to be the dominant instrumental form of the Classical period, in the works of Haydn and Mozart.
After a short visit to the south of France — transported by a charming miniature for bassoon and piano by Jacques Ibert (“Carignane”), suavely played by Edelmann — Rust and Breheda launched into the "probable" American premiere of Robert Kahn’s Cello Sonata in F, Op. 38. Kahn was a disciple of Brahms who lived to the middle of the 20th century and composed in a style that quickly became obsolete, due to the groundbreaking experiments of a few young hotheads led by Arnold Schoenberg. His music well deserves a hearing today. The sonata was composed five years after Brahms’ death. It vehemently insists there is still a lot to say in the key of C (or in this case, F).
Performing with dash and virtuosity, Rust and Breheda brought the composition's late Romantic flourishes (sometimes without the "late") to life. The slow movement, with its tone of noble pathos, was particularly successful. The vigorous outer movements had a sense of rhythmic propulsion and drive that was captivating. And if the themes themselves were less than memorable, they were always provided with accompanying figures that kept things interesting and enabled Rust and Breheda to demonstrate what outstanding chamber players they are. The lone trio on the program was an arrangement by a composer-friend of the performers of the Trio Pathétique by Michail Glinka. Although it didn’t sound completely idiomatic played by two instruments that share the same registers, I was won over by this version. The Largo movement was like an operatic scene in which three dramatis personae take turns in the coloratura style that must have inspired Glinka while he was touring Europe in the 1830s. He often sounds like a Russian Rossini with borrowings from Beethoven, most notably the chromatic descending scales that conclude first movement of the Ninth Symphony. It was hard not to feel that by playing Brahms last, Breheda and Rust were doing more than ending their program with a bona fide masterpiece. They were also showing how musical form works. The Brahms Sonata in E Minor was his first work for an instrumental duo. He already had two piano quartets and the F-Minor Quintet under his belt and at 30 he had inherited the mantle of the masters, at least in the field of chamber music. That is evident whether it's the long lines of the first movement, or the odd ländlerlike Scherzo (there is no slow movement), with its trio section that seems to be choking back tears. In this passage Rust and Breheda suggested — with the urgent hesitancy of the four-note motive — a sentiment that was forlorn and questioning at the same time. This was followed with a teeth-rattling fugal finale, in a dramatic stroke that Rust and Breheda took to full advantage. The galloping triplets accrued power as they progressed and neither player yielded rhythmically or dynamically to the other. It was probably the most ferocious music for cello written before or, perhaps, since. Their performance fully realized its power and relentless passion.
(Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who teaches at Diablo Valley College.)
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Rebecca Rust and Friedrich Edelmann
