RECITAL
Carnegie Hall
Gidon Kremer - Violin
Daniil Trifonov - Piano
- MOZART - Fantasy for Solo Piano, K. 397
- WEINBERG - Violin Sonata No. 5, Op. 53
- MOZART - Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 481
- WEINBERG - Solo Violin Sonata No. 3, Op. 126
- SCHUBERT - Fantasy in C Major, D. 934
Below is the NYT review of the performance we heard.
MUSIC | MUSIC REVIEW
A Rising Star and a Master, Inspiring Each Other
Gidon Kremer and Daniil Trifonov Team Up at Carnegie Hall
By ANTHONY TOMMASINIJAN. 25, 2015
In a way, by joining the esteemed Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer for a duo recital at Carnegie Hall on Friday, the dazzling Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov was taking a bigger risk than when he played all of Liszt’s torturously difficult “Transcendental Études” in a recital last month on the same stage.
The boyish Mr. Trifonov, 23, hailed for his stupendous technique and expressive flair, has become a phenomenon in the field. Friday’s recital was just weeks after Mr. Trifonov’s acclaimed performance of Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic.
Still, it was heartening to see him embrace this opportunity to learn from a master, Mr. Kremer, 67. Their substantive program included a flinty sonata by the Polish-born composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Schubert’s great Fantasy in C, which is seldom heard probably because it is so difficult. And Mr. Kremer, whose adventurousness is undiminished, seemed inspired by Mr. Trifonov as well.
The program opened with Mr. Trifonov in a subtly dramatic and rich-toned performance of a solo work: Mozart’s dark, moody Fantasy in D minor (K. 397). Then both artists gave a commanding, intense account of Weinberg’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 5 (Op. 53), a teeming, mercurial work composed in 1953 and dedicated to Shostakovich, who became Weinberg’s mentor in Moscow. The first movement is wistful yet unsettled, with folkloric themes and a sometimes jagged piano part. The restless second movement has scurrying lines in the piano and obsessive outbursts for both instruments. A mysterious scherzolike third movement leads to an impetuous finale interrupted by a demonic fugue for piano of stunning difficulty, though Mr. Trifonov had no trouble making the tangle of contrapuntal lines clear.
In an elegant performance of Mozart’s vibrant Sonata in E flat (K. 481), Mr. Trifonov dispatched rippling runs with uncanny softness and milky colorings. I sometimes wanted a little more crackle and articulateness. Still, this was sensitive Mozart playing.
Mr. Kremer, a Weinberg champion, ranks that composer’s Solo Violin Sonata No. 3 (Op. 126), from 1979, with comparable works by Bartok and Bach. He made a case for this episodic 22-minute piece through his engrossing performance, from the opening section, all staggered chords and melodic fragments, through the final bitter dance, reminiscent of Shostakovich.
In the hushed first movement of Schubert’s Fantasy, a mournful violin theme emerges over delicate tremolos and rustling trills in the piano, music that in this rapt performance seemed profoundly mystical. The showy second movement is like a Hungarian folk dance, with leaping chords in the piano and the two instruments trading fancy runs and passagework. There is an elaborate slow movement — a grand theme with variations — and a rousing virtuosic finale. The piano part is especially hard, a maze of technical challenges. So having a virtuoso at the keyboard came in handy, especially one as sensitive to the music, and his veteran partner, as Mr. Trifonov.
In the final of two encores these colleagues showed their penchant for fun: the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli’s “Rag-Gidon-Time,” written for Mr. Kremer. This sly piece emerges in fits and starts. Mr. Kremer was a deadpan comedian; Mr. Trifonov almost broke out laughing a couple of times. He’ll learn.
CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Violin legend Gidon Kremer and the exciting young pianist Daniil Trifonov perform music that spans 18th-century Vienna to the 20th-century Soviet Union. Mozart’s E-flat Sonata features an exciting Rondo finale with variations. Schubert’s deceptively simple Fantasy in C Major also has variations—a virtuoso set on his song “Sei mir gegrüsst” (“I greet you”). The music of Polish-born Soviet composer Weinberg shares common ground with that of his friend and mentor Shostakovich, yet maintains its own original voice—particularly in its use of Jewish folk-like themes. Gidon Kremer, a champion of Weinberg’s music, brings tremendous flair and feeling to two of the composer’s violin works.
Gidon Kremer and Daniil Trifonov’s program introduces us to perhaps the greatest “unknown” composer of the 20th century: Shostakovich’s colleague and close friend Mieczysław Weinberg. Though born in Poland, he made his career in the USSR, and this essentially restricted his international fame until after his death in 1996. Weinberg’s life was a tragic one, haunted by the deaths of his entire immediate family at the beginning of World War II. Nevertheless, he was able to transmute his personal suffering into music of extraordinary expressive power and highly refined craftsmanship. We hear two works by him: the Sonata No. 5 for violin and piano (1953) and the more modernist and utterly remarkable Sonata No. 3 for solo violin (1979).
This program also presents two works by Mozart: his probing Fantasy for solo piano, K. 397, and his Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 481. The slow movement of that last piece anticipates the language of the early-Romantic period, which is also represented by Schubert’s challenging Fantasy in C Major for violin and piano, a freely conceived expansion of one of his songs.
This program also presents two works by Mozart: his probing Fantasy for solo piano, K. 397, and his Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 481. The slow movement of that last piece anticipates the language of the early-Romantic period, which is also represented by Schubert’s challenging Fantasy in C Major for violin and piano, a freely conceived expansion of one of his songs.
Kremer's bold program includes two works by Mieczysław Weinberg
Mozart, Schubert, no problem.
But the duo performance on Wednesday in the Maison symphonique by violinist Gidon Kremer and pianist Daniil Trifonov includes two works by Mieczysław Weinberg, 1919-1996, a Polish-born Russian composer whose name remains on the margins of recognition.
Even the spelling of that name has been a problem since the New Grove Dictionary of Music initially bestowed two generous paragraphs on him under the aegis of “Vaynberg.” The “Weinberg” spelling is now in the ascendant, especially after performances last year in Houston and New York of his Holocaust-theme opera The Passenger (which opens at the Chicago Lyric Opera on Feb. 24).
Kremer is a Weinberg believer. Notes to the violinist’s ECM recording of the Solo Violin Sonata No. 3 Op. 126 cite his opinion that this relatively progressive piece of 1979 can stand alongside Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin. At 22 minutes, it is approximately as substantial an executive challenge for the violinist.
The earlier Sonata No. 5 for violin and piano Op. 53 clocks in at 25 minutes, to judge by an audio-only pickup on YouTube that claims to be a live Kremer/Martha Argerich performance from November 2013. This score is toughly lyrical in a manner that brings to mind Shostakovich and, in its gentler interludes, Ravel.
Shostakovich is the composer to whom Weinberg is inevitably compared. Resemblances are not coincidental: Weinberg considered himself an acolyte. Shostakovich was in turn a staunch Weinberg supporter, dedicating his Tenth String Quartet to the younger composer.
He also stood up for Weinberg when the latter was peripherally implicated in the anti-Semitic “Doctors’ Plot” that Stalin and his cronies cooked up in the early 1950s. As a refugee of the Holocaust, which his immediate relatives did not survive, Weinberg seems to have maintained a remarkably noble bearing throughout his persecutions, which included internment in 1953. His travails did not much impair his output, which includes 26 symphonies.
These are not the first-ever Weinberg performances in Montreal: Yuli Turovsky and I Musici de Montréal gave us the Chamber Symphony No. 1 in 2007 and made a recording for Analekta. The question now as then is whether Weinberg’s music has enough individuality to reassert itself in the standard repertoire.
It is interesting to note also that Schubert’s Fantasie in C Major D. 934 has had a rough time of it since its première in 1828, when a critic (who left before the end of the performance) commented that the piece “lasts rather longer than the time that the Viennese are prepared to devote to their aesthetic pleasures.” Dreamy interpretations exceed 26 minutes. Other criticisms of the Fantasie have focused on its irregular form and the supposedly showy nature of the variations on Schubert’s own song Sei mir gegrüsst.
All of which is to say that Kremer’s program (repeated in Carnegie Hall on Friday) is bolder than most. Trifonov, the gold medallist of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, is no mere accompanist. As a soloist he will play Mozart’s non-controversial Fantasy in C Minor K. 475. The program also includes Mozart’s Violin Sonata in E Flat K. 481.
A Young Star And a Master
JAN. 17, 2015
This winter the dazzling young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov has been almost in residence in New York. Mr. Trifonov, who won both the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2011, played an acclaimed solo recital at Carnegie Hall in December. He then appeared with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, exciting audiences in Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto.
Lest anyone think Mr. Trifonov, at 23, is just the latest hot shot virtuoso, he is returning to Carnegie Hall this week with the formidable Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, 67, one of the most respected musicians of our time. Their intriguing recital offers two sonatas — one for solo violin, the other for violin and piano — by the Polish-born Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996). Mr. Trifonov will play a Mozart fantasy for piano; the duo performs a Mozart violin sonata. The most revealing performance may come with Schubert’s great Fantasy in C for Violin and Piano.
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