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RECITAL REVIEW
Superhuman Violin Playing
May 15, 2001
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By Keith Chapin
For sheer warmth and beauty of sound and a virtuosity verging on the superhuman, you could not have done much better than to hear violinist Maxim Vengerov last Tuesday in recital with Vag Papian at Davies Symphony Hall. Vengerov (b. 1974) is young but by no means new to audiences, either here or around the world. Stated quite simply, he is good.
His great strength is his tone, his ability to let his sound blossom within a bow stroke or within a phrase, at will and with sensuous effect. A program largely filled with romantic works was well suited to his abilities. Unfortunately, this repertoire also asks for a pianist of equal stature, and Papian was not this person. While his full and round sound fit Vengerov's in general, he lacked both subtlety of articulation and character in phrasing. The result: a solo recital of duo sonatas.
To begin, Vengerov gave a lushly romantic interpretation Mozart's Violin Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 454. He milked phrases for all they were worth, and even chords and staccato took on a full body. Every moment counted. This is not, however, always a good thing, particularly in Mozart, where moments do not count equally. A theme and a bridge section are different in a Mozart sonata. In this performance the tensions between sections dissolved into undifferentiated if exquisite sonority. The drama of Mozart's style suffered under the democratic equal protection of phrases, a virtue in politics but not necessarily in music.
Vengerov's care for moments found its perfect marriage in Franz Schubert's Fantasy in C Major, D. 934, the high point of the program. This work is not often played, and for good reason — few violinists can pull it off. Yet the combination of delicacy in virtuosic figuration, subtlety in long, floating phrases, and fire in rhythmic verve suits Vengerov, and he accomplished it with fine attention to the mood and character of each section. What was a weakness in Mozart became his strength in Schubert, a composer who specialized in "musical moments." (Think of his Moments musicaux, D. 780.) While Richard Strauss's Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18, is not as fine a work as those of Schubert or Mozart, Papian and Vengerov gave it a convincing performance. The full and heavy textures and rich sonorities of the work allowed each player to achieve a sound of almost orchestral mass. As in Strauss's tone poems, the drama of the work in the outer movements is one of conflicts. The two could thus play on slightly different planes and add to the heroic strain and strife of the work. The operatic slow movement (Improvisation: Andante cantabile) offered the performers more wonderful moments on which to sing. It was Vengerov the showman that won the stage and the audience in the numerous encores. Three pieces by Fritz Kreisler, two Brahms Hungarian Dances, and Bazzini's Dance of the Goblins were pure spectacle, and appropriately they were spectacularly played. Given the pieces, this is no mean feat, and it showed the violinist's versatility. While the intonation was not as pure and the passagework not as clean as in the preceding pieces, this did not much matter. You don't criticize a fireworks display for the shades of its color combinations. To close, Vengerov returned to his finely shaped phrases and warm sound in Rachmaninov's Vocalise. This was violin playing as it is rarely heard, or at least only as often as Maxim Vengerov plays San Francisco. (Keith Chapin is a violist and a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Stanford University.) ©2001 Keith Chapin, all rights reserved |
