Review: ‘Swan Song’

Inon Barnatan, piano
James Ehnes, violin
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
Oct. 27, Modlin Arts Center, University of Richmond

The trio of classical A-listers performing at the University of Richmond’s Modlin Arts Center were introduced by Paul Brohan, the center’s executive director, as a “supergroup,” which, to listeners of a certain age and musical background, summoned memories of extended guitar noodling and 20-minute drum solos.

Highbrow supergroups are a different breed, playing under different circumstances. Pianist Inon Barnatan, violinist James Ehnes and cellist Alisa Weilerstein are all prominent solo artists, but also spend a fair amount of their time playing chamber music, especially at music festivals and in special ventures such as “Swan Song,” this touring program of late works by Franz Schubert.

Barnatan played Schubert’s Sonata in C minor, D. 958; joined Ehnes in the Fantasy in C major, D. 934; and, with Ehnes and Weilerstein, completed the program with the Piano Trio in E flat major, D. 929 – a representative sampler of the music that Schubert wrote in the last year of his short but prolifically productive life.

Their performances showed, first of all, that Barnatan is as accomplished a listener as he is a pianist. A power player in the piano sonata, a stormy work that at times sounded like a succession of thunderclaps as heard on the Hamburg Steinway acquired in 2015 by the University of Richmond’s music department, Barnatan reined in the instrument’s tone and volume in the fantasy and trio.

The fantasy for violin and piano (cellists often adapt it, too) is one of the most challenging of the late Schubert works. Its main theme, introduced at the outset and reprised in the finale, is among the composer’s most soulful melodies, but needs to sound almost austere; the inner set of variations on a more dance-like theme is a showcase of virtuosic fiddling. The piano’s role is mostly supportive, but often requires a light, feathery tone that doesn’t come naturally to a modern concert grand.

Ehnes captured both the yearning emotion and propulsive energy of the piece – all that high-speed double-stopping, in tempo and in tune, in the variations – realizing the fantasy’s contrasts and working them into a persuasive musical narrative. Barnatan’s accompaniment was both rhythmically pointed and sensitive to the tonal atmospherics of his part.

The E flat is the more compact of Schubert’s two piano trios, but still an example of the “heavenly length” that characterizes much of the composer’s late work. Its first and last movements develop their themes at length, at times obsessively and repetitively; a successful performance of the trio must turn recurrent themes and developmental busyness into a coherent musical flow. Barnatan, Ehnes and Weilerstein did so quite nicely. Weilerstein’s subtle changes of inflection and tonal weight in the final movement were especially gratifying.