Music Reviews : Stern Gives Recital in Philharmonic’s Celebrity Series

Isaac Stern, virtually everyone will agree, has for the last half-century practiced insightful, refined music-making at its most elegant. He continues, at 69, to demonstrate superior control, keen insight and impeccable taste. But it would be fair to regard him more as a masterful stylist than as an impassioned romantic. The first half of his recital Monday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion certainly bore that out.

The evening opened with an tasteful, pleasant but almost cool account of Bach’s Sonata inE minor, BWV 1023. Aided by the unobtrusive pianism of Robert McDonald , the violinist made soothing but essentially earthbound music.

The pair turned next to the romantic rhetoric of Faure’s First Sonata, where their handsome shaping of phrases and movements made an attractive reading. Stern’s playing, nonetheless, proved surprisingly subdued, his tone sweet but unassertive, his emotional involvement open to question.

But following intermission, Janacek’s complex, mercurial, utterly personal Sonata fully ignited the violinist. Bringing potent vitality to the opening Con Moto, soaring lyricism to the Ballada and a wealth of colors to every movement, Stern offered an account both technically sure and emotionally expressive. He and McDonald infused the four-movement composition with unrelenting urgency and drive.

It was in the poignantly shaped Finale that the felicity of the partnership proved most tellingly in evidence; not only were violinist and pianist rhythmically secure and dynamically balanced, but they unceasingly exhibited absolute interpretive agreement, to stunning effect.

Inevitably, a series of short works completed the program, but Stern chose examples a grade above the usual chestnut status. The violinist brought clean technique and an easy manner to two Kreisler works and grace and vitality to a pair of Dvorak “Slavonic Dances,” as arranged by Kreisler.