Though there was no questioning the musicianship that the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center brought to the Ravinia Festival on Monday evening, the stylistic authenticity of the performance was another matter.
No doubt the six players who appeared in various combinations take pride in bringing considerable Sturm und Drang to the repertoire they play. Some of these players are at the virtuoso level, and they understandably revel in the brilliance of their technique as well their sound. But not all of the chamber repertoire can withstand this athletically extroverted approach, as the Chamber Music Society proved.
It was telling that the most persuasive performance of the evening was the one involving the fewest musicians. With violinist Cho-Liang Lin and violist Paul Neubauer playing Mozart’s Duo No. 2 in B-flat Major, K. 424, the concert achieved a subtlety of expression it never attained again.
Indeed, this was almost an ideal performance, with Lin and Neubauer listening meticulously to each other’s every phrase. The interplay between their lines, the warmth and evenness of their tone, the precision of their pitch all were marvels to behold. More important, both artists took pains to find musical meaning and substance in even the slightest accompanying figures.
The Lincoln Center musicians were considerably less persuasive in Faure’s Piano Quartet No. 2, in G Minor, Opus 45, even if Lin still was playing first violin. With violist Toby Hoffman, pianist David Golub and cellist Gary Hoffman joining him, the musicians addressed the Faure with great rhythmic fury and sonic power.
Though this approach would be welcome in music of Brahms or even Schumann, it was utterly inappropriate in Faure. Precisely why the string players produced such intensity of sound and generosity of vibrato in the opening and closing movements is open to discussion. Perhaps they hadn’t adequately gauged the acoustics of Ravinia’s Martin Theatre, or perhaps they simply choose to make no interpretive distinction between French and Germanic music of the 19th Century.
Either way, however, their reading of the bookend movements of the quartet was stylistically disappointing, even if the players achieved precisely the kind of overwrought fortissimos that inspire an audience to cheering.
The most formidable work on the program, Mendelssohn’s Piano Sextet in D Major, Opus 110, was also the most obscure, and the Chamber Music Society deserves thanks for performing it. If the ensemble (which included bassist Edgar Meyer) didn’t always capture the quicksilver nature of Mendelssohn’s piano-plus-strings writing, it fared much better than in the Faure. A great deal of the credit goes to Golub, whose singing tone, delicate touch and sparkling fingerwork epitomized what Mendelssohn pianism is all about.
