I SUSPECT I am alone in having found aspects of yesterday morning's festival recital slightly underwhelming.
Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses, formerly of the Beaux Arts Trio, is a highly respected musician, and an extremely sophisticated player. Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires is a world great, with huge power in her diminutive frame; and she plays with crystalline clarity. So no issues on any of those fronts.
The problem for this listener specifically related to Meneses's interpretation of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata and how he played it. There were no technical issues. Meneses phrased it all beautifully and seamlessly, delivering the music with great poise and immense refinement. But the first movement in particular seemed to me to lack brio, energy and drive. It's just taste, of course, but I feel the music, when it really gets going, should bubble effervescently off the page. All that poise and grace felt a bit characterless to me.
And that impression of the Schubert was only confirmed by the total contrast with Brahms's First Cello Sonata, where Meneses played deep from within the soul of the dark-hued music, finding tons of meat on its bones. And in the sizzling contrapuntal interplay with Pires in the finale of the piece the two musicians were as one, capturing the full dramatic scale of this phenomenal sonata.
Together they gave a beautiful account of Mendelssohn's Song Without Words, while Pires, with a heartwarming mix of flexibility, generous phrasing, strength and complete clarity, opened the concert with a lovely version of Brahms's opus 117 Intermezzos.
HHH
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