Alisa Weilerstein ★★★★✩
Performers: Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Inon Barnatan, piano. Place and date: L’Auditori (7/III/2024)
A good chamber music session in all senses ranging from the conception of the works to the exercise of interpretation. Even with the small imbalances that such a sensitive genre allows, and the tension and attention that both performers must demand of each other if they do not want a read and routine version.
These works of such sensitivity nevertheless present, in rooms of significant dimensions, the unevenness that marks the history of both instruments; the cello that since the baroque has faced structural modifications (type of strings, addition of the pike that connects to the ground, bow) but that never reach the technology of the piano, which has advanced even in the characteristic of the sound, in its brightness and intensity that, even in this case with a very subtle pianist, does not fit the same character that the cello demands.
And although these five sonatas, especially the first ones, are manifestly pianistic, the essences are found in the expression of the cello, which usually marks the initial theme, and then leaves the show to the piano, remaining in the essential moments.
And this was made known by this excellent cellist who, from the beginning (the sonatas were performed from the 1st to the 5th, maintaining the order) exhibited an exquisite, sweet sound, with elegant phrasing, a subtle exercise of dynamics. (well respected by the pianist) and a crescendo in the interiority and depth of the phrase that reflected the manifest intentionality of the composer at different moments in his life. The stupendous complicity revealed differences for the better, at least in precision, because the mismatch sometimes, if subtle, fuels the expression. Exemplary the vital crescendo of intensity and drama, without excesses of sound, looking inward.
They are very complex works and I would like to recommend the work of two young musicians from here in a version, recently recorded, by Maria Canyigueral and the cellist Ramón Bassal of enormous merits.
