Tetzlaff’s Trio Blends Warmth, Polish

Saturday in New York, Christian Tetzlaff, the young German violinist, played a marathon of the six Bach solo sonatas and partitas for his instrument. By all reports, it was a soul-stirring event, the violinist in a darkened hall, illuminated by just a single spotlight. A repeat might have been hoped for Wednesday when Tetzlaff arrived at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but the hall is not intimate enough and making a habit of this obsessive act could be a lonely and draining existence for a player.

Instead it was as if Tetzlaff had climbed down from his Bach mountain for an evening of Schumann and sociability. The program of three companionable works for piano trio brought the violinist together with cellist Tanja Tetzlaff (his younger sister) and the noted young Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.

The main works were the last two of Schumann’s three piano trios. But the mood was first set by an arrangement for trio of Six Studies in Canon Form that Schumann originally wrote for the pedal piano (a now obscure instrument with added foot keys). These might also, by a more philosophical composer, have been titled Studies in Agreement.

The canon, or round, is a curious invention of classical music. In jazz, two or more players might have a “discussion,” trading personal interpretations of the same material back and forth. In Indian music, a sitar and tabla enjoy competition, mimicking each other’s rhythmic inventions. But in the classical canon, each instrument is a Xerox machine. Independence is in the timing; the melody is the same but the individual player must keep his or her head and not be swayed by the same music heard overlapping.

Great canon writing was once thought to be one of composition’s most highly prized skills, and Bach was its greatest master. Schumann, late in his life, became entranced with the technique, and it pervaded Wednesday evening’s music. And since the violin was most often assigned the music the others imitated, it was almost as if Tetzlaff, still bathed in Bach’s aura, was passing down wisdom that the piano and cello imitated in order to internalize it for themselves.

These were consequently small-scale, almost private, interpretations, too small in some ways for the space. The cello, for instance, didn’t easily project over the piano (despite Andsnes’ crystalline tone), but what was heard was exceptionally eloquent playing from a musician still in her 20s and easily the equal of her two more famous partners. Indeed, the polish of all three musicians was extremely high, the sentiment exceptionally warm, the ensemble of one mind.

We don’t often hear the Piano Trio No. 2 in F major, Opus 80, or the Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor, Opus 110. They come from Schumann’s last decades when his mind was thought to be going, and it is the earlier first trio in D minor that is the popular one. We tend to underestimate late Schumann, and this ensemble of young, golden players told us why.

Where the first trio is more typically dramatic, the latter two, while still in the traditional four movements, are more fluid, more imaginative, more in the manner of Schumann’s elusive character pieces for piano and his songs (arguably his finest music). And here the violinist unusually set the tone. (The leader of a piano trio is often the piano--Artur Rubinstein once told Jascha Heifetz that even if God were the violinist, the name of their trio would still be the Rubinstein, God, Piatigorsky Trio). Tetzlaff’s tone, both the physical sound that he makes and his musical manner, favors finesse over brawn, with attention directed less to the audience than to his companions and to the music itself. We as listeners became eavesdroppers on their exalted and very beautiful musical communion.

In a space closer to a chamber than a pavilion, we might not have felt quite so distant. But the strain to hear, to enter into a private world, had its own rewards. These are idealistic players who have a musical maturity beyond their years, but in their youthful freshness they also have none of the sourness that can go along with experience. In the modern concert world, such a trio is a rare treasure.