MUSIC REVIEW : Mutter Shines Despite Restless Civic Audience

There were three performers in the all-Brahms recital at the Civic Theatre on Thursday night: virtuoso violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, her attentive accompanist Lambert Orkis, and a creature called The Audience.

The participation of the last of these was not in the spirit of composer John Cage, who might have included audience noise as part of the musical experience.

Instead, the volleys of extraneous sound from loud coughing, audible talking, rolling change, and dropped programs made concentrated and careful listening to Mutter’s delivery of three Brahms sonatas a force of will.

This was unfortunate, if not unfair, both for Mutter and those in the audience who were considerate and quiet.

The young German violinist is famous for her striking appearance, her penchant for strapless gowns, and her prodigious talent. One assumes these were the reasons for the large turnout for her San Diego recital debut presented by the La Jolla Chamber Music Society.

If so, the audience could not possibly have been disappointed. Soft, alabaster shoulders bared above a gun-metal silk gown, her head turned in profile, Mutter recalled John Singer Sargeant’s notorious painting “Madame X.”

Mutter possesses elegance, but without detachment. Her broad, appreciative smiles were as genuine as the sincerity of her playing.

Mutter opened with the Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, a highly conversant work between violin and piano.

After the first few measures, one could understand why some musicians have felt Brahms’s duet sonatas are out of balance--with the “solo” instrument in competition with the piano.

Mutter appeared comfortable with the richly textured, or “heavy,” piano part in the hands of her musical partner, Lambert Orkis.

So comfortable, she chose three such duet sonatas for her program. (Further, she shared all her bows with Orkis, and appropriately so.)

Second on her program was the Violin Sonata No.1 in G Major, a work Clara Schumann, Brahms’ lifelong friend, included among her favorites: “The deepest and most tender strings of the soul vibrate to such music.”

And of the Third Violin Sonata, which Mutter performed last, Schumann said, “. . . In the surging of harmonies in the first movement, I always have the feeling I am soaring in the clouds. I love this sonata indescribably. . . .”

Brahms’s music synthesizes the art and architecture of Classical techniques with Romantic expression of enormous emotional range.

The orchestral quality of his chamber works comes from, among other aspects, dense contrapuntal writing and long melodic arches. Every note of his chamber music is said to be a constant challenge of interpretation.

Mutter seems more inclined toward the transparencies rather than the densities of Brahms. The result is a lightness--neither light-headed nor light-hearted (there is nothing weak nor frivolous in Mutter’s approach)--but there is actual light, a vibrant spectrum, shading, depth and luminosity.

She frequently breathes a buoyance into the lines she molds, and the preference for fluidity over incisive articulation is welcome in this music.

However, Romanticism’s dark, velvety soulfulness, the blissful melancholy that swells up into melodies from the “gut” and that by contrast, makes what is light brilliant, kept evaporating Thursday night. All slippery silk radiance--and with no absorption--limited the dimensions of this music.

Granted, the Civic’s acoustics are unsuitable to the dynamic proportions of the violin, especially its subtleties. Perhaps this was the circuit breaker that resulted in The Audience’s own performance.

Mutter was gracious in response to unconventional applause between movements, and she did not seem overtly bothered by doors closing and other such noise mid-phrase. (Four years ago, Kiri Te Kanawa stopped her recital at the Civic, and with polite irritation, asked coughers to refrain until she finished singing.)

Mutter’s encore, however, had a slightly mocking tone. After bowing to bravas, she performed Brahms-we-all-know, flying headlong through a schmaltz-laden Hungarian Rhapsody No.5. Gratefully, she left such showpieces off the program and focused carefully and beautifully on music Clara Schumann loved.