SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Walton, Bach, Rodrigo, and Sarasate: Gil Shaham, violin, Akira Eguchi, piano, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 22.1.2008 (BJ)


This was almost like two separate recitals by entirely different musicians. I cannot recall ever having been so totally baffled by a performance as I was by the playing of Walton’s Violin Sonata and Bach’s A-minor Solo Sonata in the first half.

I have long been an admirer of Gil Shaham. He seemed to be playing with all his familiar technical mastery, the tone rich and gleaming, the bow moving up and down the strings with a straight-line precision that recalled the great Erica Morini. His pianist, Akira Eguchi, was proving himself no mere accompanist but a fully worthy partner, commanding a wide range of sonorities and yet, even with the piano lid wide open, never covering the sound of the violin. And still, with all this, nothing I heard before intermission made musical sense to me.

In the Walton, it is easy to say that it was the music itself that was at fault. This is one of the English composer’s weaker works, constantly spinning notes without ever coming up with a really memorable idea. But how could it be that the Bach seemed uncoordinated, lacking either a true rhythmic pulse or a convincing articulation of thematic material? The next morning, just to check my own reactions, I put on the recording of the same work by Shaham’s fellow-virtuoso Aaron Rosand. Yes, I know recordings are made in easier conditions than those of live performance. But the difference was like that of night and day: every phrase, under Rosand’s hands, fulfilled its due place in the whole, without ever undermining the integrity of the overall structure.

It was interesting to find one of the local critics, the highly knowledgeable Richard Campbell of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, observing in his wholly laudatory review that, in the Bach, the sound of Shaham’s violin “filled Benaroya, one stanza after another, seamlessly and almost without pause.” That, I suppose, was precisely my problem with Shaham’s interpretation: it subordinated everything to continuity and to homogeneity of texture, where Bach, in my view, demands profiling of phrase and differentiation of line. An interesting example, then, of two critics hearing the same thing and coming to opposite conclusions about it.

By this point in the program I had almost decided not to review the recital, for it seemed my ears, on that particular evening, were on wrong. But then came a second half of virtuoso pieces from Spain, and suddenly magic was being worked. Joaquín Rodrigo was not the greatest composer in the world, but his Sonata Pimpante is a piece that effortlessly outshone Walton’s drab effort. Shaham and Eguchi played it with irresistible elan, and in Sarasate’s Zapateado, Romanza Andaluza, and Zigeunerweisen they had chosen musical bonbons that demanded every possible ounce of virtuosity and flair, and received it. Perhaps the most notable thing about Shaham’s approach to such pieces is that his impeccably dignified and charming stage deportment perfectly matches the inspiration of a composer who knew how to have fun without ever declining into tawdriness or vulgarity.

For the record, I should report that the large audience was clearly delighted with the whole recital. Shaham and his partner rewarded their listeners with an encore in the shape of one of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances–a zestful and altogether delightful conclusion to a puzzling but in the end rewarding evening.

Bernard Jacobson

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