MUSIC REVIEW : Violist Gives Brahms Just the Right Touch

Although Mozart was a violist, he never composed any solo works for the instrument he knew so well. Violist Cynthia Phelps attempted to compensate for this omission by including Beethoven’s “Variations on a Theme from Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ ” in her Sunday evening recital for the Kingston Mainly Mozart Festival.

Principal violist with the Minnesota Orchestra, Phelps is one of the more persuasive violists on the solo circuit. She appeared as soloist in last season’s Mainly Mozart festival and is slated to return this May for the next installment of music director David Atherton’s annual Mozart fling. Phelps also served as the San Diego Symphony’s principal violist in the 1985-86 season.

Beethoven’s workaday variation cycle may have made the requisite thematic connection to Mainly Mozart, but the weight of Phelps’ recital was borne by Brahms’ emotionally rich E-flat Viola Sonata, Op. 120, No. 2. Phelps approached Brahms’ soaring themes with her wonted plangent sonority and just enough Romantic schmaltz, but she wisely avoided any hint of sentimental indulgence. She projected a sophisticated understanding of the sonata’s architecture and thematic transformations. Since the work places equal demands on both viola and piano, accompanist Karen Follingstad provided fluent and appropriately muscular keyboard support. Her deep bass rumble was just the right Brahmsian signature.

Haydn’s Divertimento in D Major, originally a cello piece, opened the recital with its good-natured themes and breezy passage work. In both the Haydn and the Beethoven, Phelps made the technical challenges appear inconsequential.

Performing in the comfortable Terrace Room of the Kingston Hotel, which was set up for no more than 150 people, the duo enjoyed unusual and highly rewarding immediacy with their audience. Unfortunately, the economic realities of most chamber music series preclude such intimate conditions.

As a surprise bonus, Phelps’ husband, baritone David Malas, sang Papageno’s mock suicide aria from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote” at the recital’s conclusion. As he demonstrated last spring as Papageno in San Diego Opera’s production of Mozart’s comic opera, Malas has a gift for stentorian declamation and shameless mugging.