Reviews
Tuesday May 31, 2011
NEW LEBANON, N.Y. -- There are some compositions that still sound modern a century or more after their origin. Count Debussy's only violin sonata among them.
Composed in 1917, it is Debussy's last work, and one of his most personal. With a little stretch of the imagination, it's possible to hear impending death and world war in the spare textures and strange juxtapositions.
In the opening concert of the Tannery Pond season Saturday night, violinist Glenn Dicterow and pianist Alon Goldstein gave an engrossing performance of this Janus-like work, which recalls the harmonic language of works like "La Mer" but looks forward the later 20th century's explorations of form and irony.
Dicterow, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, brought a concertmaster's sumptuous tone and passionate thrust to the music. If he was the leader, Goldstein was a sympathetic partner.
The performance launched the Tannery Pond debut of the Amerigo Trio, made up of Dicterow with his wife, violist Karen Dreyfus (also a Philharmonic member), and cellist Inbal Segev. They went on to Dohnanyi's Serenade for string trio and, with Goldstein, Brahms' Piano Quintet, Opus 25.
The Philharmonic players were just back from the orchestra's two-week tour of Europe, and it was hot in the former Tannery, leading Dicterow to complain aloud (during Dohnanyi, not Debussy) that he felt like a "French fry." Perhaps the heat made fries of them all by the end, when the Brahms quartet sounded not just energetic, but driven.
In the tannery's close acoustics, the Amerigo Trio (named for explorer Amerigo Vespucci) came across as a powerhouse, yet flexible in its approach. The Dohnanyi serenade, modeled on Brahms' serenades for orchestra, enjoyed both passion and drollery. A high point was the generous lyricism of the fourth-movement variations.
In Brahms' wild Gypsy finale, the players had enough energy in reserve to make the faster-and-faster ending practically fly off the stage. Though a little stingy with lyrical warmth, the performance was also notable for the smooth integration of piano and strings -- not always the case, given the vigor of the piano writing.
Brahms' fascination with Gypsy and Hungarian music, and the Hungarian Dohnanyi's evocation of Brahms, provided a program link between the two composers. Debussy, on the other hand, was quintessentially French, and his violin sonata -- formally titled Sonata III -- was to have been the third of six sonatas he planned before death claimed him.
It is fairly often performed, but not often with the all-out intensity Dicterow and Goldstein brought to it. The "fantastic and light" intermezzo indeed had a fantastic quality, reflecting Debussy's interest in the commedia dell'arte clown Harlequin. As for the finale, the program notes quoted Debussy as likening its "deformations" to "a snake biting its own tail."
Welcome to the 20th century.