MUSIC REVIEW : ‘WAGNER VERSUS BRAHMS’ AT GETTY

The Wagner/Brahms polarity--always as much a matter of personal as of musical styles--does not seem as acute today as it did a century ago. But the palpable contrast in the two composers’ musical thought and expression makes for effective juxtapositions, as the fifth concert in the “Age of Romanticism” series at the Getty Museum demonstrated Saturday night.

The program was also to feature “rarely performed works,” but rarity proved a very relative quality. If Brahms’ Sonata in A is less frequently played than his two other sonatas for violin and piano, it is probably because it has a less showy, almost repressed, part for the fiddle.

Violinist Yukiko Kamei and pianist John Steele Ritter gave the lyrical work the benefit of a tight, committed partnership that stressed clarity and control. Some acoustical quirk of the performing platform in the Inner Peristyle Garden gave the piano a decided dynamic edge but Ritter’s restraint usually balanced that.

Paired with, or perhaps pitted against, Brahms’ Sonata was Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” a somewhat inappropriate comparison designed to underline the composers’ differences. Kamei led 12 other players in a relaxed but surprisingly well-polished performance.

Brahms’ “Liebeslieder” waltzes are well-known, but he wrote many other works for small vocal ensembles, and the concert began with six seldom-heard quartets, with piano. Soprano Mary Rawcliffe, mezzo Rickie Weiner Gole, tenor Jonathan Mack and baritone Timothy Mussard sang with well-balanced, radiant ease and clear textual point. Robert Winter accompanied sedately.

Winter, who lectured to open the program and became the principal stagehand as well, provided more demonstrative support for Gole’s expressive reading of the five lieder Wagner composed on texts by Mathilde Wesendonck. Gole displayed ample vocal resources in well-thought, unexaggerated interpretations.