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SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW



Schubert, Chopin and Brahms: Olympic Music Festival, Quilcene, WA, 25.7.2009 (BJ)


Paul Hersh is–to put it as simply and unequivocally as possible–a great pianist. He produces a tone of pearly limpidity, at every level of dynamics; and he spins a line of unfailing strength and sensitivity, in every condition of tempo and textural complexity.

His music-making was central to all three works on this program. The afternoon opened with Hersh in partnership with the Seattle Symphony’s principal second violin, Elisa Barston, and they brought searching intelligence and unforced grace to Schubert’s relatively unfamiliar A-minor Sonata, or “Sonatina,” as it is more commonly called. This is not the very greatest Schubert, but even relatively minor Schubert is worth listening to, and the slow movement in particular sounded a characteristic note of inward lyricism. Next came Chopin’s Cello Sonata, in which the pianist was joined by Elisa’s sister Amy Sue Barston; the highlight again was the slow movement, a brief reverie, but a ravishing one, which was projected with the utmost sympathy and warmth.

It was after intermission that the greatest music was to be heard: the first of Brahms’s three piano quartets, the G-minor work that concludes with a dazzling gypsy rondo, rightly termed by Hersh in his introductory remarks “a rip-snorter.” Here he and both Barstons, playing with undiminished fervor and luxuriant tone, were joined by the festival’s founder and director, Alan Iglitzin. Their performance realized all the intensity of the first movement, the grandeur of the “Animato” section in the slow movement, and the sheer gusto of the finale. In the characteristically Brahmsian intermezzo, moreover, violist Iglitzin dug into his strings to superbly gutty effect. Another great afternoon of chamber music, then–and one that whetted my appetite for the all-Brahms program scheduled for the following weekend.

Bernard Jacobson

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