A Blending of Styles in Celebrity Chamber Groups

Celebrity chamber music, the superstars getting together to form a supernova, proving that they can submerge their egos in the interests of intimate ensemble, is more often a lark for the performers than a service to the composer. But the exceptions can offer memorable rewards.

Deutsche Grammophon in notes for its new recording of the complete Beethoven string trios (427 687, 2 CDs) offers no information on the performance history of the ensemble composed of violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, violist Bruno Giuranna and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The results, however, indicate that they did not meet in a studio, shake hands and sit down to sight-read some fun stuff. These performances not only crackle with virtuoso intensity: they are of a piece, and they are Beethoven.

Not a trace of flippancy here. Even in the hyper-extended Opus 3, rhythms are precise, phrases fully formed. And in the three trios of Opus 9, Beethoven’s splendid warm-ups for the Opus 18 quartets, Mutter/Giuranna/Rostropovich, whether assuming a single voice or as three individuals, give us the full quota of fiery drive, conversational elegance, Olympian serenity--whatever the music calls for. The darkly rapturous slow movement of the Trio in D, Opus 9, No. 2, says it all. A splendid achievement.

Celebrities of the recent past, violinist Henryk Szeryng, cellist Pierre Fournier and pianist Wilhelm Kempff assembled in 1970 for the first and only time to contribute the six big Beethoven piano trios to Deutsche Grammophon’s massive, limited-circulation Beethoven bicentennial release. The trio recordings return now as a readily obtainable, mid-priced DG set (415 879, 3 CDs).

The results are curious, with Szeryng, normally the aggressive player, deferring to the senior member, Kempff--the dozing man’s pianist--in matters of tempo (slow, when his is the opening gambit, slowed-down when he is preceded by Szeryng) and dynamics (narrowly soft).

Kempff dominates not through physical strength but strength of will, imposing his underemphasis, his miniaturization, presumably in the interests of Good Taste and Classicism, in which intensity and music-flexing were at one time verboten.

Add to Szeryng’s frustration and Kempff’s browsing Fournier’s earnest, gray-toned cello and you wind up with, well, very little.

Another mid-priced reissue (EMI/Angel Studio 63124, 3 CDs) offers the piano trios with opus number as well as some snippets without recorded in 1970 by the young, powerhouse assemblage of violinist Pinchas Zukerman, cellist Jacqueline du Pre and pianist Daniel Barenboim. Their playing here, whether or not always in accord with the chamber music ideal of thinking with a single mind, was--and is--so imbued with vitality and affection, to say nothing of sheer mechanical skill, that academic critical standards become irrelevant.

While the perfection of an interpretive concept may be the end-all of chamber music, if what emerges after years of ensemble gestation is playing of solid proficiency, one would much rather have the stars in less than perfect alignment.

These thoughts are inspired by Germany’s dozen-year old Abegg Trio--violinist Ulrich Beetz, cellist Birgit Erichson, pianist Gerrit Zitterbart--offering every last scrap Beethoven wrote for their combination of instruments on four individual Intercord CDs (860.860 through 860.863).

But the humor of, say, the flashing finales of Opus 1, No. 2 or Opus 70, No. 2 elude these people; the heavenly arches of the ‘Archduke’ are flattened out in their rhythmically square reading, etc.

Much is made in Intercord’s program notes about the performers’ adherence to the fast tempos indicated by Beethoven’s original markings (as recalled by Czerny).

OK, but Abegg speed plus Abegg stolidity do not add up to liveliness. It might be noted in this connection that the more or less ad hoc Perlman-Harrell-Ashkenazy trio, in EMI/Angel’s 1987 set, play nearly everything faster, and far more imaginatively, than the Abegg without citing (or, perhaps, even being aware of) historical precedent.