Maisky Trio, 26/09/2018
Rachmaninoff : Trio élégiaque No. 1
Shostakovich : Piano Trio No. 2
Tchaikovsky : Piano Trio
Sascha Maisky, violin
Mischa Maisky, cello
Lily Maisky, piano
Musical dynasties are an appealing concept, but the end product does not always match expectations. This looked like a splendid evening of Russian brooding at its finest, served by one of the world's foremost cellists and his two eldest children, who are just beginning to make names for themselves as performers. It was a good evening, certainly, but it did not quite live up to my hopes. For this, I lay the fault, if such it can be called, at Lily Maisky's door. For such a young artist, it's surprising to find a pianist in what I'm inclined to call the Soviet mould, playing with a hard, bright, even agressive tone, which immediately sounded misplaced in the Rachmaninoff. By contrast, father and son were constantly on the same page in terms of their sound, unified to a remarkable degree, contrasts and accords managed skilfully at all times.
The three trios tonight were presented as a program 'in memoriam' - Rachmaninoff for Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich for Sollertinsky and Tchaikovsky for Rubinstein - but there's some doubt about the first one, given the date of composition. However, the similarities are interesting; all three end with a funeral march, and the points of comparison between Rachmaninoff's youthful exercise and Tchaikovsky's monumental trio extend much further, which is possibly why it's assumed to be a tribute to the older composer. It's a little like the influence Debussy's String Quartet had on Ravel's. Even the principal melodies of each piece are strikingly similar.
Rachmaninoff of all tonight's composers demands a rich, silken timbre from the piano - one need only listen to the composer playing his own works to understand that - and that was not what we got from Lily. More, she tended to overpower her partners. It's fairly easily done in this piece, Rachmaninoff was certainly more at ease in writing for the piano than for the string instruments, but that's all the more reason to pay close attention to the balance of the piece. The Shostakovich fared better, that hard piano tone more suited to Shostakovich's bitter and bleak moods, and the last two movements, in the contrast between the grim chaconne and the grimacing dance of death, was very well delivered by all three players.
The Tchaikovsky can be a difficult piece to absorb in concert. It's long, it's densely packed, and that immense set of variations that constitutes the second (and last) movement is a bit taxing for the listener if not imbued with an enormous amount of character. I've heard it done as it should be, at which point, it stops just being a set of variations, and turns into an enchanting string of vignettes, character pieces, like Schumann's Carnaval, before ceding the territory once again to the sorrowing opening theme and its funeral march setting. Here, there was much to admire - again, the entente between Mischa and Sascha was impressive and striking - but the variation movements never quite took off as they can.
An enjoyable evening, therefore, but not quite as much as I had hoped and expected.
[Next : 9th October]
Shostakovich : Piano Trio No. 2
Tchaikovsky : Piano Trio
Sascha Maisky, violin
Mischa Maisky, cello
Lily Maisky, piano
Musical dynasties are an appealing concept, but the end product does not always match expectations. This looked like a splendid evening of Russian brooding at its finest, served by one of the world's foremost cellists and his two eldest children, who are just beginning to make names for themselves as performers. It was a good evening, certainly, but it did not quite live up to my hopes. For this, I lay the fault, if such it can be called, at Lily Maisky's door. For such a young artist, it's surprising to find a pianist in what I'm inclined to call the Soviet mould, playing with a hard, bright, even agressive tone, which immediately sounded misplaced in the Rachmaninoff. By contrast, father and son were constantly on the same page in terms of their sound, unified to a remarkable degree, contrasts and accords managed skilfully at all times.
The three trios tonight were presented as a program 'in memoriam' - Rachmaninoff for Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich for Sollertinsky and Tchaikovsky for Rubinstein - but there's some doubt about the first one, given the date of composition. However, the similarities are interesting; all three end with a funeral march, and the points of comparison between Rachmaninoff's youthful exercise and Tchaikovsky's monumental trio extend much further, which is possibly why it's assumed to be a tribute to the older composer. It's a little like the influence Debussy's String Quartet had on Ravel's. Even the principal melodies of each piece are strikingly similar.
Rachmaninoff of all tonight's composers demands a rich, silken timbre from the piano - one need only listen to the composer playing his own works to understand that - and that was not what we got from Lily. More, she tended to overpower her partners. It's fairly easily done in this piece, Rachmaninoff was certainly more at ease in writing for the piano than for the string instruments, but that's all the more reason to pay close attention to the balance of the piece. The Shostakovich fared better, that hard piano tone more suited to Shostakovich's bitter and bleak moods, and the last two movements, in the contrast between the grim chaconne and the grimacing dance of death, was very well delivered by all three players.
The Tchaikovsky can be a difficult piece to absorb in concert. It's long, it's densely packed, and that immense set of variations that constitutes the second (and last) movement is a bit taxing for the listener if not imbued with an enormous amount of character. I've heard it done as it should be, at which point, it stops just being a set of variations, and turns into an enchanting string of vignettes, character pieces, like Schumann's Carnaval, before ceding the territory once again to the sorrowing opening theme and its funeral march setting. Here, there was much to admire - again, the entente between Mischa and Sascha was impressive and striking - but the variation movements never quite took off as they can.
An enjoyable evening, therefore, but not quite as much as I had hoped and expected.
[Next : 9th October]