Notturno - Schubert

Sonata in F minor Op 120 No 1 - Brahms

Piano Quartet in C minor Op 60 - Brahms

The second concert in the National Concert Hall's Schubert/Brahms Festival brought together the five major participants in a variety of ensembles. Visiting American violinist Kurt Nikkanen, Israeli cellist Matt Haimovitz and French pianist Philippe Cassard played Schubert's Adagio in E flat, D897, best known under the title Notturno. Dutch violinist and viola player Isabelle van Keulen joined John O'Conor in the viola version of Brahms's F minor Clarinet Sonata. And after the interval, Nikkanen, Van Keulen, Haimovitz and Cassard joined forces in Brahms's C minor Piano Quartet, about which the composer wrote to his publisher, "On the cover you must have a picture, a head with a pistol pointed towards it. Now you can form an idea of the music!".

The Schubert Notturno, slow, affecting, but sometimes very busy, is a difficult work to pace, and with the cello consistently stepping out of line in the doublings with the violin this performance failed to gell, in spite of sensitive playing by both Nikkanen and Cassard.

Brahms's F minor Sonata suffered from not dissimilar problems. Van Keulen's penetrating presentation contrasted oddly with O'Conor's reserve and stolidity. There was too much tension in the viola line, not enough in the piano, and too often a lack of connective tension between the two players.

The Brahms after the interval, however, revealed musicmaking of an altogether different calibre. The most celebrated movement in this work is the cello-rich Andante, but this performance tilted the interest towards the first two movements, where Cassard was a commanding presence at the keyboard, and the fever and anguish (Brahms always associated the work with Goethe's Werther) was vividly transmitted by every member of the ensemble.