Kissin and friends explore Shostakovich sonatas at Carnegie
At Carnegie Hall, the month of May is coming to a close with Shostakovich and Evgeny Kissin. The pianist is leading a series of concerts of the composer’s music. The second one, Wednesday night, was dedicated to the instrumental sonatas for cello, violin, and viola.
That placed Kissin, one of the great contemporary pianists, in the company of three leading musicians: cellist Gautier Capuçon and violinist Gidon Kremer in the first half, and violist Maxim Rysanov playing the valedictory Viola Sonata, Op. 147, in the second. So, an all-star concert, and typical of that kind of event, an uneven one. But it did have a solid start, deep moments, and a powerful conclusion.
A substantial part of the strength of the performance of the Op. 40 Cello Sonata was the tremendous sound Capuçon gets out of his instrument, a very special 1701 Matteo Goffriller cello. The volume is so great, even at low dynamic levels, that one would swear the instrument physically expands when Capuçon plays it. It is deep and not dark but glowing, and even when he alters the timbre, including thinning it, the sonority somehow doesn’t diminish in size.
That carried the start of the Allegro non troppo, which sounded like the two musicians were at first going in different directions, the cellist hinting at rubato, Kissin defining steady rhythms. The two came together fairly quickly, playing at a noticeably slow tempo. That was a consistent choice throughout the concert, and wasn’t inherently a bad one, but in every piece it meant that the contrasts between moderate and slow tempos were not as effective as they should have been.
Nothing deterred Capuçon. In the first movement, he was aided by the marvelous light way Kissin handled the transitions between the minor key first idea and the second, major key one, and the cellist lofted off that. His playing sang through the Allegro, though one wanted a wider separation of feeling between that and the first movement, while in the Largo he produced a fantastic grinding, yawing sound that got at Shostakovich’s emotional vehemence. This brought the performance into focus and drove it through a satisfying finale.
The Op. 134 Violin Sonata was shakier. Kremer was too subdued during the entire opening Andante, his playing so recessive that he seemed to go in and out of focus. His musical presence was diminutive, not just in expression but technique, with inchoate articulation and mushy phrasing. There was none of Shostakovich’s vehement feeling, which in slow music comes through as a feeling of suspense.
In fast music, it’s aggressive, and Kremer did project in the Allegretto, with palpable energy, but his playing was often sloppy, as if he couldn’t control the force that he needed. Kissin played through everything, and his command never flagged, but he and the violinist seemed on parallel tracks. The concluding Largo had more sustained concentration and balance from Kremer, but the sonata as a whole never felt like a complete performance.
Rysanov and Kissin delivered a full, unerring performance of the great Viola Sonata, the composer’s last work and one finished just a bit more than a month before his death. While on a large-scale the contrast in pace between the opening Moderato and closing Adagio again could have been greater, the spirit of the music was there from the opening pizzicatos. Rysanov played these quietly but intensely, a way to draw in the listener sitting in a crowd of people whose phones were sounding all through the concert.
This is one of the great examples of Shostakovich’s expressive austerity, music that flows horizontally and has a lean profile, something between a Giacometti sculpture in motion, and a rough, sinewy thread. Rysanov and Kissin played this with enormous expression and control, the way to get at the suspense.
The Allegretto was aggressive, and while at first one wanted a bit more slicing, the balance between force and legato served the twists and turns of the music—the pair seemed focused on the feelings of determination and fate in the music. That made the allusions to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata in the finale weighty with meaning, even as the two simply stated the theme and moved on. In the playing, this and Shostakovich’s quotes from Strauss and his own music that flow through the final pages had the powerful, and perfectly realized feeling of a mind letting go of its memories.
Evgeny Kissin’s Shostakovich series concludes 8 p.m. Saturday. carnegiehall.org
