What makes a good chamber music performance? For the answer, one need look no further than the ideal artistic connection between Englishmen Andrew Manze and Richard Egarr.
The violin-piano duo delivered a nuanced performance of Mozart sonatas, plus Franz Schubert’s Sonata in G minor – composed when he was only 18 years old – before a trifling audience at Gates Concert Hall on Friday night.
In this instance, however, the slight number of listeners added to the evening’s intimate sensibility. As Manze pointed out in his warm and witty remarks, the evening’s Hausmusik program and corresponding instrumentation best lent itself to a snugger venue in which the dimmer sound of his gut-string violin and the leaner timbre of the fortepiano wouldn’t get lost in an aural vacuum.
But the hall’s fine acoustics met the challenge, fully articulating the understated, yet masterful musical discourse that evolved between Manze and Egarr.
The twosome’s technical versatility is a given, but what really makes their music-making memorable is their stylistic synchronicity. In Mozart’s Sonata in A Major, Egarr’s deliberate, selective voicing of particular melodic phrases perfectly played into the ebb and flow of Manze’s lyrical lines, culminating in an invigorating run through the spirited final movement.
In the expansive Schubert work – which Manze described as a “mini-symphony” – the duo appealed equally to intellect and emotion. Their exquisitely tender handling of the “andante” movement gently probed the quiet corners of private thoughts preceding a skillful transition into Schubert’s bold, majestic statements that frame the sonata’s “allegro moderato” conclusion.
Whereas Mozart’s substantial Sonata in B-flat Major invoked momentum and fervor in the performers. Manze and Egarr, in constant communication through eye contact, facial expressions and gestures, played as a combined entity of physical movement that deepened their cohesive interpretation of the notes on the pages in front of them.
Another welcome add-on to the evening’s performance was Egarr’s amusing – yet wonderfully informative – description of the lightweight fortepiano, including a demonstration of the knee levers that were eventually replaced by foot-operated sustaining pedals in modern pianos.
In a word, the duo’s delivery was at once edifying and inspiring – a jewel in this fifth season of Newman Center Presents.
