REVIEW: CMS STUDIO INITIAL RELEASES

posted by James Reel

For a forthcoming issue of Fanfare:

DVORAK Terzetto, Op. 74; Piano Quartet, Op. 87 BEETHOVEN Piano Quartet, Op. 16 * Wu Han (pn); Erin Keefe, Arnaud Sussmann (vn); Beth Guterman (vla); David Finckel (vc) * CMS STUDIO RECORDINGS 82503 (78:42)

ELGAR Piano Quintet WALTON Piano Quartet * Wu Han (pn); Ani Kavafian, Arnaud Sussman (vn); Paul Neubauer (vla); Fred Sherry (vc) * CMS STUDIO RECORDINGS 82505 (78:42)

    Except for the Dvorak Piano Quartet, none of these works have yet been recorded to the saturation point, so these first two releases in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Studio series are attractive for that alone. The playing throughout is typical of the current, very high American chamber-music standard: incisive attacks, rather lean tone (not as lush as Eastern Europeans can be), and impeccable technique. The performance can be suitably sweet when necessary, as in the Dvorak Terzetto, but more often than not, intensity and drama are conveyed more strongly than warmth. This means that the finale of the Dvorak Piano Quartet gets an exciting, edge-of-the-seat performances, but the passages that invite a more affectionate approach seem comparatively underplayed, or at least less emotionally involved.
    The curiosity on the first disc is the Beethoven, the composer’s own piano-and-strings arrangement of his famous quintet for piano and winds. It’s disconcerting to hear strings where the winds should be—for one thing, this early Beethoven work now sounds much more Romantic. The ensemble sound is now mellower, and the piano playing must be more subtle; Wu Han plays with the necessary restraint, without sacrificing character. The Dvorak string trio comes off with good humor (especially the third movement) and a nice variety of tone color. The Piano Quartet gets a big, public performance, yet one that finds the music’s plaintive side when the texture occasionally thins out—but only then. The Lento is tightly controlled, nearly as tense as the first movement, and I’ve already described the overall approach in the previous paragraph.
    My problem with the second disc has nothing to do with the playing and interpretation, and everything to do with Elgar, a composer for whom I have little sympathy in large-scale works. He was a superb miniaturist, but, except in the Cello Concerto, was unable to craft a coherent musical argument in a large-scale format (the Violin Concerto being the prime offender, with the Second Symphony not far behind). The first movement of this quintet is a mess; Sibelius and Mahler, to mention two contemporaries, could cause fragments to cohere into something compelling, but Elgar simply cannot. Here, the players don’t waste their time trying to pull the bits and pieces together; they emphasize the music’s shifting character, moment to moment, from anticipation to bluster to sentimentality; it’s a collage of interesting, sometimes haunting sketches that Elgar never properly integrates and develops. Elgar is much more competent in the slow movement, particularly in the passionate central section, between the more tranquil outer parts. The Lincoln Center players underline the contrasts, even while handling the transitions beautifully. The final movement, though, is again compositionally and thematically diffuse (and not just because material from the first movement reappears here). If English pastoral music is said to evoke a cow gazing over a fence, Elgar’s Piano Quintet evokes a cow pie, yet I must admit that this performance is as committed, and as extroverted, as can be.
    Walton’s Piano Quartet exists on a far higher plane. It was written at about the same time as the Elgar, by an inexperienced 16-year-old, yet—granting that it was revised and no doubt improved later—it’s much more coherent and consistently striking. The Scherzo, for example, is muscular yet fleet, and the last movement is rustic and rambunctious, thanks both to Walton and to the musicians at hand.
    As recorded and produced by Da-Hong Seetoo, an audiophile as well as a fine violinist (he recorded the Tchaikovsky Trio with Finckel and Wu Han on their own ArtistLed label), the musicians seem to exist in a real physical space, heard from a front-row audience perspective rather than a player’s perspective (Seetoo doesn’t seem to cram microphones under the piano lid and into the violins’ f-holes, but lets the sound breathe a bit before capturing it). Despite my dismissal of the Elgar as a composition (but not as a performance), both these discs provide a clear and flattering snapshot of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.