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RECITAL REVIEW
December 9, 2004
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By Robert Commanday
As dependably as anything can be in music, the charmed partnership of Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax transported a houseful of folk in UC's Zellerbach Hall Thursday for two hours during which nothing else mattered. In Ax's own declaration, they had set out to explore the adventurousness in Beethoven's cello-piano sonatas, Nos. 1, 3, and 4, and two dear variation sets. Ax introduced the program, chatting in the personal, living room manner that went with the pair's “easy-going” exchange with each other and Yo-Yo's smiling, animated relationship with the audience.
Adventurousness — Beethoven's and the performers' — was, of course, just a part of what was revealed. Only initially and on the surface do Mozart Magic Flute variations seem disarmingly ingenious vehicles for performer display, for Ax's lustrous and translucent pianism and the effortless and delicate way with which Ma makes the cello bow seem a painter's brush. Deep into the Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen Variations that began the program, Beethoven's homage turns to serious “humor,” his soulful reading of what he heard and felt beneath the surface of Mozart's “tune.” There, Ma dug in, producing song, fantasy, lyricism that were touching. This happened again in the set of seven on Bei Männern that opened the second half.
 Emanuel Ax The Cello-Piano Sonatas are as individual in form and idea as any other single series of Beethoven works you can name. Although an early piece, Op. 5, No. l, in F, has already the grand line and, at the beginning, an extended Adagio that is a lyrical fantasy, broadened spaciously in this performance. That is a set-up for an Allegro with multiple themes and development that Ma and Ax played for all its boldness. The interplay between them is natural in their partnership but Beethoven had composed that into the piece, the piano presuming to be dominant, then the cello having its own voice and say. That exchange between these two was enchanting, Ax playing with crisp, light exactness, Ma forming his phrases almost vocally.
The freedom that Beethoven enjoyed in this composition, turning on a dime into the unexpected, ignited the pair. The energies went on to light up the dashing Rondo, Ax dextrously floating the fluid continuity. Their timing was exquisite for the tempo break and the briefest Adagio musical parenthesis, dodges that set up the brusque conclusion. “Take that,” it says. The partnership of this pair extends to an intuitive unity. One can imagine them rehearsing with a minimum of discussion, one just picking up the other's musical thought and then following it, in agreement, or simply building on it or answering. Ax sets the context, the continuity; Ma goes from there, then Ax answers, back and forth. Ma produces a variety of voices, different timbres for different kinds of phrases and melody, timbres that are specifically his and particularly right for the music at that point. Sonata No. 4 in C, Op. 102, No. 1 is high Beethoven, composed at the brink of his last period, a masterpiece. The opening Adagio, gentle, cantabile, is more than introduction to the assertive Allegro. Playing it as a reverie, Ma and Ax, established its character as to make it instantly recognizable when, unconventionally, it returns after the Allegro. There the Adagio transformed and with expression heightened, serves as entr'acte before the bold finale Allegro vivace.
One encore followed: the slow movement of Chopin's G minor Cello Sonata, not a major work, infrequently played. It became an idyll, a gentle rhapsody, lovely in Ma's singing of it.
(Robert P. Commanday, senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)
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