Music Reviews : Swensen, Kahane: Sweet but Subdued

A concise, complementary and unhackneyed program made Sunday’s Coleman Chamber Music concert in Pasadena seem enticing on paper. Came the event, and violinist Joseph Swensen and pianist Jeffrey Kahane made good on much of the promise, in a warm and relaxed duo recital.

The pair began with a welcome novelty, Kenneth Frazelle’s 1989 “Fiddler’s Galaxy.” In two movements, the piece deconstructs Appalachian fiddle tunes with economic flair. Alas, it never reassembles them, leaving a patchwork of tantalizing invention and unsustained energy.

Or so it seemed Sunday. Breaking through the stuffy acoustic of Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium is never easy, and Swensen’s and Kahane’s choice of subdued lyricism as a unifying interpretive stance did not always help.

Particularly bereft was the finale of Brahms’ “Regenlied” Sonata, Opus 78. Introspection is quite appropriate here, but as Swensen and Kahane proved abundantly in the first two movements, it need not preclude vitality and long-spanned connections.

Beautifully projected lines and incisive kinetic bite returned in Grieg’s Sonata No. 3, in C minor. Probably nothing could really redeem the lengthy posturing of the opening, but Swensen and Kahane made its sweaty banalities seem bearable as a prelude to the tender charm and dancing vigor of the ensuing movements.

When forced to dig deeply into the instrument, as he sometimes was by Kahane’s more demonstrative outbursts and the rhetorical demands of Brahms and Grieg, Swensen could sound hoarse.

When allowed some sonic space, though, he played with rare elegance and effortless detail. Dynamic inequities aside, Kahane and Swensen collaborated with the technically accomplished ensemble and fluent interpretive exchanges of a well-established partnership, which theirs is.

In encore, the duo offered more Brahms and a wonderfully slinky account of their own sly arrangement of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”