New York Classical Review

The history of rock supergroups is the perfect example of the description “mixed.” For every Cream or Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, there’s been an Asia or a U.K., bands where a lot of talent and even more effort produce diminishing results. 

And as much as classical music culture likes to imagine it is immune from the kind of chemistry issues that afflict more commercial ensembles, groups of classical stars can also have their issues. That was on display Sunday afternoon, when violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Evgeny Kissin took the stage at Carnegie Hall.

The trio of classical music stars played three pieces: Solomon Rosowsky’s Fantastic Dance on a Hebrew Theme, Op. 6; Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in B minor, Op. 67; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50. There were multiple commonalities running through the program. These were all Russian composers, Jewish themes were central to the first two pieces, and the second two were composed to memorialize the deaths of others. While the program fit together, the musicians often did not.

This was mostly a problem in the first half and mostly an issue with Isserlis. The cellist is very much a stylist, and that makes him an interesting soloist but also an often inconsistent chamber musician. As a stylist, he concentrates on shaping notes with beauty and expression, and in particular tends to treat a full phrase as if it were a single object, smearing individual notes into an undifferentiated, elongated shape.

In music where parts are linked together to support others and make a whole, this is an obvious problem that disrupts the composition. Sunday, it also unbalanced the musicianship inside the trio. 

In contrast, Bell played with great style, his usual gorgeous sound and scintillating, detailed inflections, his easy projection often burying the cellist, who has a quiet sound. This was the takeaway from the Fantasia, an interesting artifact from a composer who was part of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in pre-Soviet Russia. Bell brought a level of beauty and guts to what is otherwise an undistinguished work.

Kissin glued the two string players unobtrusively, keeping tempo, rhythms, and dynamics clean and steady. That was vital because Isserlis, when he did push through the textures, was usually playing his own rhythms, or even and often to clear rhythm at all, accents and articulations drowned in legato. This was much more prominent and problematic in Shostakovich’s great Trio No. 2.

The exactitude of Shostakovich’s rhythms is essential to the control of what can be overwhelming emotions in his music, and Isserlis’d stylishness often seemed to separate him from Bell and Kissin. The cellist also had very shaky intonation in the quiet harmonics of the introduction. His playing kept pulling the mysteriousness of the Andante into strange preciousness, and his weakness with rhythm cast a stolid pall over the Largo.

The key Allegretto was better in every way. Bell and Isserlis were absolutely together holding down the pizzicato chords and rhythms while Kissin played the great theme with a brilliant objectivity, the balance of chiseled force and expressive distance that lets the things Shostakovich could not speak bloom on their own. One could almost hear Kissin putting the quotation marks around the theme, which Shostakovich used again in his masterpieces, the Eight String Quartet and his “Babi Yar” Symphony (No. 13). That was the artistry is expressing history through music.

For no discernible reason, the Tchaikovsky Trio was much better, fine in almost every way. The only weakness in the performance come in the theme and variations section of the second part. Tchaikovsky was never great with structure and this is the weakest part of the piece, an ordinary thematic idea that just spins in place without going anywhere. With an ensemble that had only two-thirds the force needed, the performance dipped into a trough.

Before and after that, everything felt right. This was the best balanced playing of the program, and Isserlis was also at his best, his instrument singing with prominence and clear, full articulation in the lovely opening material. There were fleeting moments of missed intonation and a couple rare flubs for Kissin. But overall there was a smooth flow through the whole piece (outside the variations) that spoke to the three musicians playing together with both technique and expressive focus and purpose. 

The trio come out to acknowledge the vociferous standing ovation with an equally flowing encore of the Andante con moto tranquillo movement of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1. This was elegant and delicate without being fragile, perhaps the finest moment of the concert.

Soprano Lise Davidsen,with pianist James Baillieu, sings an all-Schubert program 8 p.m. June 5. carnegiehall.org