San Francisco Classical Voice

In a city so often visited by internationally-renowned guest soloists, a resident musician, no matter how brilliant, can have trouble getting attention in the press. But--with the best players, anyway--the word still gets out. Violinist Ian Swensen's recital Monday evening, at the San Francisco Conservatory, was played to a packed hall.

The program had a narrow chronological focus (the earliest of the three works was written in 1914, the last just thirty years later) but Swensen's frenetic musical personality was the real common thread. In fact, nothing could have illuminated the distances among the pieces so well as this recital did. Swensen hit each of them at full force, but with very different results.

Stravinsky's 1932Duo concertant came off least well. The piece itself is usually described as "neoclassical," but that label doesn't really capture the funny feel of the thing, which is like shards of L'histoire du soldat and Pulcinella animated by the soul of The Rake's Progress, exuberantly physical, but also remote and a little cold. Pianist Eric Zivian hit the mark precisely in his limpid, cool account of the piano part. Apollonian disdain, though, is not in Swensen's character. His hot-blooded Duo concertant was awash in fervent vibrato and dozens of ripe portamenti.

At first this was unexpected fun, but increasingly there seemed something wrong about it. None of the first three movements seemed to end properly. The written endings are nonchalant, almost accidental. In a serenely aloof performance they work, but here, with Swensen's urgent and passionate persona demanding that the listener follow a grand romantic trajectory that isn't there, the endings seemed cheap and unfair.

The fourth movement, Gigue, was another story. Swensen's performance, full of swagger and studded with squeaky-clean left-hand pizzicati, was exhilarating. And the concluding Dithyrambe, for once, fully vindicated Swensen's passionate approach. I doubt that this was exactly what Stravinsky expected of his violinist, but it was magnificent.

Following the Stravinsky was a blistering performance of Bartok's 1944 solo Violin Sonata. On his own here, Swensen played with a feverish intensity that, at one point, proved too much for his instrument (by the end of the second-movement Fuga, the E string was disastrously out of tune). He made the very most of the dramatic possibilities in Bartok's music, taking repeated technical risks that (to his credit) almost always paid off. If the way through the opening Ciaccona was sometimes obscure, the sheer physical momentum of the Fuga and the concluding Presto more than compensated. The ovation at the end was well deserved.

The Conservatory's new faculty cellist, Jean-Michel Fonteneau, joined Swensen and Zivian in Ravel's 1914 Piano Trio. Fonteneau's predecessor, Clive Greeensmith, left the Conservatory after one year, having been offered a spot in the Tokyo Quartet. Judging by last Monday's performance, Fonteneau is at the least Greensmith's equal. He has an elegant and well-controlled tone. He can play very powerfully, and knows when to do so--he was never overbalanced but never sounded overbearing. And he is the most attentive chamber player I have ever seen; at every moment he was clued in to his partners' parts, responding in detail and instantaneously to whatever they did. Such precision of ensemble is rare enough in long-established ensembles; to find it in an ad-hoc group like this is astonishing.

Not that Fonteneau by himself made the performance, by any means. Swensen did a fine job of matching his vibrato to the cellist's (though, in all honesty, by this time his all-purpose portamenti were becoming wearing), and Zivian's piano playing was simply extraordinary, full of color and energy, but never blurred or unclear. Together the three made something pretty remarkable. The first movement's initial serenity and later passion, the third's gravity, and the energy of the second and fourth (the second movement was encored) were brilliantly caught.

(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