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RECITAL REVIEW
December 7, 2005
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By Jonathan Russell
Richard Stoltzman is a frustrating musician. A man who clearly has talent and an active and interesting musical imagination, his basic clarinet sound is often pinched and thin and sometimes just bad. I hadn't heard him live in many years, so I don't know if Wednesday night's performance, at Herbst Theater as part of the San Francisco Performances series, with Emanuel Ax on piano, was typical of his recent playing. But even his recordings tend to display the same weaknesses, if a bit less extremely.
His strengths and weaknesses were most clearly contrasted in Brahms' hefty and serious F-minor Clarinet Sonata, which ended the first half of the program. The tender second movement was beautiful and entrancing, displaying to its fullest Stoltzman's considerable ability to play softly and gently and craft an exquisitely phrased lyrical line. The waltzing third movement was graceful and refined, though in the more heavy-footed Ländler sections, I wished for much more volume.
This was the problem in the dramatic, declamatory first movement and the energetic final movement as well, which lacked the thickness or volume of tone that the music demanded. Things like phrasing, tempo, articulation, and emotional connection are far more important to quality of performance than the basic sound. But in a piece like the Brahms, a rich tone really does seem essential to convey what the music is all about. And the listener wonders whether this thin, raspy sound really what Stoltzman wants when he plays Brahms. In fact, it seemed like he wanted to be able to play louder: At one point in the last movement he even let out a huge squawk because he was trying to play louder and harder than his set-up would allow.
Ax's playing was rich and forceful, though in the second movement, and even more so in the concert's opener, Debussy's Première rapsodie, he seemed unable to match Stoltzman's delicacy and softness of tone in the more ethereal sections. In this way, the strengths and weaknesses of the two were nearly opposite. Yet in spite of this, much of the Brahms was quite engaging and captivating, due to the beauty of phrasing, nuance, and dramatic sense of both players. This made it all the more frustrating: The promise of a stunning performance failed to materialize, due to the limitations of Stoltzman's sound. Debussy's Rapsodie featured some more stunningly soft and gentle playing from Stoltzman — almost too soft at times. The performance as a whole, though, from both players but especially Ax, needed more time, more breath, more leisure and languor. Many players more expert at music in the Germanic tradition fail to recognize how different Debussy is. Debussy is not about emotions and direction, but about colors and perfumes and atmospheres. This performance, like many, tried too hard to make Debussy do something and go somewhere instead of simply luxuriating in all the nuance and sensuous pleasure of his colors. The same was true of Debussy's Estampes, which Ax played solo after the Rapsodie. The performance was nice, colorful, charming, but not ravishing. On the second half of the program, featuring all American music, Stoltzman sounded much more in his element. Even his body language and demeanor seemed to relax as he wittily introduced the pieces and cracked a few jokes. His best performance of the evening was in Leonard Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata, the composer's very first published piece, which opened the second half. The beginning of the piece is in a European neo-classical idiom reminiscent of Hindemith, before Bernstein's distinctly American personality, with its odd meters, syncopations, and blue notes, comes bursting through. Stoltzman really sank his teeth into this one, wailing away on the jazzier parts, playing with great control and finesse on the more lyrical parts. Stoltzman's raspy sound and vibrato suited the character of the piece perfectly, reminding me of his recording of the Copland concerto, always my favorite. And he even achieved a volume and fullness of sound on this piece that he never managed to achieve on the Brahms or Debussy. Robert Beaser's Souvenirs and Lukas Foss's Three American Pieces, both in an alternately jaunty and lyrical American idiom, rounded out the program, and Stoltzman played them with the same verve, contrasted with tenderness and lyricism, that he brought to the Bernstein. Still, even at his jazziest, Stoltzman has a certain tension about him. It feels like he can never completely let go and blow freely, as though he's always trying to bend the music to his will rather than letting himself go in the music. Obviously it's worked for him and he's had quite a career, and when he's on he can be breathtaking. And yet, sometimes his tone is thin and his fingers are sloppy and you wonder how on earth he ever made it to where he is.
(Jonathan Russell is a professor of musicianship at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an editor with PBA Music Publishing. He is active in the Bay Area as a clarinetist, bass clarinetist, and composer.)
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Richard Stoltzman
Emanuel Ax
