Weilerstein Trio battles pitch, acoustics in SFCM season-closer

Dry acoustics of Lincoln Middle School Auditorium dampens the listening experience at Saturday’s SFCM program of piano trios

By David Abrams
http://cnycafemomus.com

Most chamber music aficionados would agree that the presence of a seven or nine-foot grand piano at a chamber music performance is a welcome sight. Of course, one would hope that this instrument might function more as a vibrant complement to the varied timbres of a chamber ensemble than as a virtual piece of furniture adorning the stage.

Saturday’s season-closing Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music concert, featuring the Weilerstein (Piano) Trio, suggests that the dry acoustical venue of Lincoln School Auditorium is patently unfriendly to three-legged creatures whose natural habitats are concert halls that permit the instrument to sustain and project its deep, rich quality of tone and harmonic spaciousness.

The program, comprising piano trios of Schumann and Dvořák as well as an arrangement commissioned by the Weilerstein Trio of Janâček’s String Quartet No.1 ("The Kreutzer Sonata"), looked good enough on paper ― but when it comes to music, hearing is believing.  And much of what I heard from the piano, its lid fully open, were the muted tones of an instrument placed seemingly far from the action onstage.

If there’s one composer whose chamber music demands a stronger presence from the piano, it’s Robert Schumann. The Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major, Op. 80, one of the composer’s three works for this combination of instruments, calls for many of the subtleties present in his earlier piano character pieces, such as Kreisleriana, Carnaval and Papillons. Indeed, these charming effects must buoy to the surface in the piano parts of the composer’s chamber works in order to capture the essence of his particular brand of Romanticism. They did not, and except for the Trio’s opening movement ― which focuses more upon the strings than the piano ― the Weilerstein Trio's performance of this work ultimately failed to capture the spirit of Schumann.

Cellist Claire Bryant, a last-minute replacement for Alisa Weilerstein (who I am told left Saturday for Germany to make her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic), proved a solid replacement for the youngest member of the Trio that bears her name.

Bryant played with strong command of rhythm and alert ensemble interplay in the Nicht zu rasch (Not too fast) final movement of the Schumann Trio, and a solid sense of pitch in the Scherzo movement and throughout the sixteenth-note octave passages with Donald Weilerstein in the intimate In mässiger Bewegung (With intimate expression). While there were times I wish she had used more muscle in several of the weightier passages, Bryant’s heart-felt gesticulations and body language was a delight to watch, and it was apparent that she had immersed herself totally in each of the three works on the program. Like Bryant, pianist Vivian Weilerstein immersed herself in the music, swooning and swaying to the musical stimuli and executing the syncopations in the final movement with grace and élan.

Much less fun to watch was violinist Donald Weilerstein, whose stationary presence stood in stark contrast to that of the two others players and whose eyes seemed glued to the printed music. Weilerstein, once a magnificent player who held the first-violin chair of the celebrated Cleveland Quartet for two decades (1969-1989), struggled throughout the evening with pitch problems that led him to play sharp (above pitch) in each of the four movements of the Schumann Trio, particularly in the Scherzo movement, as well as during the two works that followed.

The program continued with a transcription commissioned by the Weilerstein Trio arranged by composer Stephen Coxe, who reset Czech composer Leoš Janâček’s First String Quartet, subtitled by the composer The Kreutzer Sonata (after Tolstoy’s novella of the same name), for violin, cello and piano.

Prior to the performance of this transcription, the Weilersteins presented the SFNM crowd with a lengthy (and unannounced) pre-performance talk about the work and the novella from which it was inspired. While a brief explanation of the piece would have sufficed to pique the listener’s interest, the Weilersteins proceeded to deliver a drawn-out and at times rambling blow-by-blow description of the work that included the playing of several musical excerpts. Considering the detailed notes in the printed program, I found the talk superfluous at best and patronizing at worst. Yes, this is a middle-school auditorium; no, you’re not addressing middle-schoolers.

I’m not a great fan of Janâček’s First String Quartet, whose programmatic, piecemeal writing and sudden violent shifts of mood and character advance the composer’s dramatical points with precious little in the way of craft and musical savvy (as might be found in works of, say, Béla Bartók). Still, Janâček’s writing for strings ― especially his special effects and technical idiosyncrasies endemic to stringed instruments ― carves an identity in this work that is wholly original and that generates its own sense of logic. When shifted to the venue of a piano trio, however, these idiomatic string effects are lost, and there is precious little substance with which to replace it.

There was nevertheless much to celebrate in the Weilerstein Trio’s manner of performance of Coxe’s transcription, which the players obviously hold to great esteem and which generated some of the most convincing playing of the evening ― from Vivian Weilerstein’s cleanly delivered arpeggiated sextuplets in the opening Adagio, to Donald Weilerstein’s expressive playing in the extended opening violin lament in the final movement. Especially beautiful was Bryant’s poignant alto-register solo in the final movement.

Ensemble was tight throughout the work, as the players navigated the hyper-schizophrenic opening of the second (Con moto) movement ― with its grotesque outbursts that alternate with spurts of folk-like melodic fragments ― in convincing fashion. Were it not for the violinist’s habitual intonation problems this could have been a first-rate performance.

Saturday’s program ended on a high note with a solid effort on Dvořák’s Piano Trio in E Minor, a perennial audience favorite perhaps more commonly known as the Dumky Trio.

Dvořák’s Trio unfolds as a suite of dances, or dumky (a set of melancholic Ukrainian folk songs) that alternate, in quick succession, with lively Ukrainian and Slavic dances. Each movement cuts right to the chase, sacrificing thematic development for the sheer joy and pathos of the gypsy-like dances. The result is a divertimento of sorts ― a collection of pieces designed strictly for entertainment that makes no pretenses of being a great work of art.

Aside from the fifth movement, which is fast from start-to-finish, each movement of the trio begins with a slow dumka followed by an energetic dance, yielding an unabashedly sappy and oftentimes maudlin feel to the rapidly contrasting musical material. There was some lovely playing on the part of Bryant in the slower sections, particularly in the meditative laments of the first and third dances, as well as some attractive effects in the piano part during the second dance, as Vivian Weilerstein evoked the images of a harp with the "strumming" of arpeggiated chords in the piano's upper-register.

The vivacious fifth movement, with its bouncy ethnic flamboyance and pronounced rhythmic energy, worked its magic in the filled-to-capacity auditorium, where feet could be seen tapping throughout the aisles ― and quite possibly down the corridor that connects the auditorium to the parking lot. 

Details box
What: Weilerstein Trio
Where: Lincoln Middle School, 1613 James Street, Syracuse
When: April 24, 2010
Time: 2 hours and 15 minutes
Information: call (315) 446-3424
Ticket prices: Regular $20, Senior $15, Student $10
Website: http://syracusefriendsofchambermusic.org