Aspen Music Festival (11): American String Quartet, Lang Lang. 10.08.2006 (HS)

 

The American String Quartet savored all the telling details in quartets by Mozart, Shostakovich and Beethoven before a full house in Harris Hall Tuesday night. They especially seemed to relish the rhythmic contrasts in the Beethoven Quartet in C-sharp minor, op. 131, a late quartet that hits just about every stop between adagio and presto.

 

It was a close call between that quartet and the Shostakovich No. 11 for which was most effective on the program. The opener, Mozart's Quartet in F major, seemed like a divertissement compared with the depths of emotion in the Shostakovich, which followed. After intermission, the Beethoven conjured a whole mountain landscape of serene highs and deep shadows.

 

Characteristically for the ASQ, it could adapt its own sound chameleon-like to the different composers' styles. This is particularly so for the middle range in the quartet hierarchy. First violinist Peter Winograd played with keen intensity, but kept a bright sound throughout. Second violinist Laurie Carney and violist Daniel Avshalomov colored their timbres and varied their attacks more. Cellist Wolfram Koessel shone best in the Mozart, which often takes a cello-forward approach.

 

As a result, the Shostakovich seemed to develop a pulse of its own, which paid dividends in the finale. The last few pages, where the composer achieves the remarkable trick of letting the rhythm fade without losing the pulse, was especially gripping. The hollow sound the quartet created was heartbreaking.

 

The Beethoven got a standing ovation (which the Shostakovich deserved, too) as much for its big ending as for the way the quartet articulated the details of its long arc. The solo line moved from player to player in the Andante seamlessly, and the stop-and-start of the two short movements before the final Allegro felt totally natural, not easy to do.

 

The pianist Lang Lang brought his personal brand of musical showmanship to the Tent Wednesday in a special event that did not quite fill the seats. He opened with the Mozart Sonata in C major, but most of the program played to his strength, music of the high Romantics, including Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Rachmaninov.

 

Lang Lang, 24, has enormous technique. He can blast through the most difficult passages, and he can coax the most delicate sounds from the piano. His body language speaks volumes, sometimes more than his music. He strides slowly, almost gingerly, to the piano. At the keyboard, he leans this way and that, gets a dreamy look on his face, bends over the keys at particularly intense moments.

 

There are moments of pure bliss in his playing, not so much in the Mozart, where his runs tended to rush and the rhythms were crisp and dry, rather than sprung. Loud passages, such as the opening of Rachmaninov's Prelude No. 5 in G minor, tended to clang rather than produce a rich texture. But the dreamier sections of the Chopin B minor Sonata and, especially, in the Liszt Petrarch Sonnet No. 104 floated in the air beautifully. In those moments, the music took wing, transporting us to some other place. Few pianists can do that.

 

In Schumann's Kinderscenen, the famous "Träumerai" created the same magic. His playing was sweet throughout the piece, but his mannered approach to this music of nostalgia and innocence felt unnatural, as if he were removing himself from the moment and describing it from the exterior.

 

He ended the concert (there were no encores despite three loud curtain calls) on Vladimir Horowitz's highly embellished transcription of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Once again, the lighter, delicate moments sparkled, but the denser, louder passages lacked power, partly because of his tone and partly because he tended to dash them off rather than give them the majesty they deserve. In the end, Lang Lang's theatricality and moments of sheer musical magic make for a special evening.

 

Monday's artist faculty chamber music program focused on the Britten-Shostakovich connection. Inserting Les citations by Henri Dutilleux must have seemed like a good idea because the composer wrote it for the Aldeborough Festival, which Britten founded. But it didn't fit with the rest of the music, and it extended the program to 8:25 p.m.

 

Two early works by both composers made the point best that the two composers admired each other's music. Shostakovich's early Piano Trio No. 1 got a charming reading from violinist Earl Carlyss, cellist Joshua Roman and pianist Ann Schein. And Sean Newhouse conducted an ad hoc group in a joyful rendering of Britten's Sinfonietta.


Harvey Steiman