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First Chair New York
92nd Street Y
06/06/2004 -
John Harbison: Wind Quintet
Ludwig van Beethoven: Quintet for Piano and Winds
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quintet
Yefim Bronfman (piano)
Members of the New York Philharmonic Now that the veggie burgers and tofu dogs have been grilled and Memorial Day is behind us, it is time to look forward to the innocent pleasures of summer, but there is still the need to sweep up a few rags and tatters of the season just past. The New York Philharmonic may not be the best ensemble in town, but they certainly sustain the longest schedule, beginning about three weeks before everyone else and continuing to concertize almost until the end of June. Yefim Bronfman is in town to play with the full orchestra and took time on his Sunday off to present a chamber recital with many of its principals at the 92nd Street Y.
Three years is a very long time in the development of Ludwig van Beethoven. The 1796 wind piece is a comparative work of tafelmusik beside, say, the first six string quartets composed in 1798-1800, but still contains many moments of melodic invention and interesting interplay. In what would prove to be the best technical performance of the afternoon, the Philharmonic section leaders honked and tooted flawlessly, even if Mr. Bronfman seemed to be playing the quintet for the first time. One would have wished for a bit more delicacy in the attack, however, and considerably more élan in the alla marcia finale. After all, if these people are going to dump their spit on the floor in front of us, they jolly well ought to capture the insouciance of the composer. The gorgeous tone of clarinetist Stanley Drucker did make up somewhat for an otherwise rather heavy-footed run through. My only quibble with the Harbison, other than that the work as a whole had a fingernail on the chalkboard effect on me personally, was that the balance of the group, comprised of players farther down on the Philharmonic organizational chart, was weighted too heavily on the side of the horn (with often doubled bassoon), a common acoustical anomaly for wind quintets, but one that can be easily solved by actually listening.
What should have been the crowning glory of this session turned out to be a very disappointing mugging of a truly outstanding chamber work. The four top string players of the Philharmonic, concertmasters Glenn Dicterow and Sheryl Staples, and principal violist and cellist Cynthia Phelps and Carter Brey respectively, competent players in their own right (I have been enamored of the play of Ms. Staples for some time now, less so of Mr. Brey), produced, as an ensemble, a surprisingly thin and whiny sound, particularly inappropriate for such a dense and emotionally weighty piece as the Brahms Piano Quintet. This nasal sonority grew inexorably louder but, ironically, less forceful as this rendition wore on, eventually reducing Mr. Bronfman’s role to chief pounder (and none too accurately at that). There were many errors of commission and downright amateurish tendencies, such as leaving one’s bow too long on a particular string, filling the brief Brahmsian silences with dissonant residue. The phrasing was mind-numbingly metronomic; no latitude for expression or verve, one especially exciting and exotic melody in the last movement reduced to the dullness of a fingering exercise by simply not pausing even a nanosecond for poetic rubato (and thus extinguishing a certain “gypsy” flavor in the process). Lovely or powerful snippets were also cut off too soon, dissolving in the players’ anxiety to be ready for the next entrance. One did get the feeling that the crowd would love this type of Hollywood soundtrack performance, the hollowness of the ever-increasing volume revving up the uninitiated, and the ultimate response of bravi and wild applause only confirmed this critic’s worst fears. But perhaps we shouldn’t condemn this pick-up team too severely; oddly, they have had little experience playing together as a group. Oh well, only one more Philharmonic concert and then it really will be summer!
Frederick L. Kirshnit
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