Brahms isn’t a perfect fit for it

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter can inspire rapture in an audience. Her recital of all three Brahms violin sonatas -- not exactly virtuoso, showoff pieces -- at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night drew a sizable house that demanded four encores before letting her go.

It wasn’t only the general public that cheered. Important, knowledgeable members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic were in attendance too, making her first recital here since 1998 an event.

So it’s with trepidation that a lonely voice ventures a contrary opinion.

Except for the Third Sonata in D minor, these are mostly lyric pieces, perhaps more suited to a small, intimate gathering than to a big concert hall. Mutter played them that way, but even so, with an impression of quiet, unshared privacy and deeply expressive intensity that might have more successfully crossed the front of the stage. Possibly she misjudged the acoustics of the hall.

Idiosyncratic

To be sure, Mutter could be muscular and robust, particularly in climaxes or toward the end of movements, when the shift became almost predictable. But she was also idiosyncratic in degrees of hushed dynamics, in a focus on individual moments at the expense of forward movement and in stripping Brahms’ romanticism of its wonted warmth and richness.

In the Sonata No. 2 in A, which opened the program, Mutter initially responded to pianist Lambert Orkis, her longtime collaborator, with an impression of frailty. Whenever Orkis took a bolder lead, her replies made him adjust quickly and become a subdued partner.

At their best, the two played with a vividness of dance rhythm or a sweet songfulness, as when building an achingly beautiful line in the slow movement, which they ended with a ghostly pianissimo. But elsewhere, there was a feeling of emotional withholding.

Lean and modern

The Sonata No. 1 in G, which followed, again had moments of great beauty but even more of contained emotion. The openings of the first two movements each evoked bucolic, delicate imagery, and the quiet agitation of the final movement was intense but as if engraved on a small jewel.

Here, as elsewhere, Mutter’s approach to Brahms was lean and modern, technically impressive but interpretively cool. Somehow Brahms began to sound like Faure.

For the concluding D-minor Sonata, Mutter finally brought out a more consistently big sound and fiery intensity. All the same, one missed a sense of cohesion and tight construction. Mutter seemed to be making choices at every moment, but the reasons remained obscure. Expressive moments would emerge from near nothingness and return to nothing, but what inner impulse impelled either journey was unclear.

Still, she played the final movement with committed turbulence and impressive attacks and feints.

Throughout Orkis was supportive and self-effacing, the latter to a fault. Brahms was a superb pianist and surely did not intend such an undramatized partnership.

Nonetheless, the audience would not be satisfied until four encores were played. In order, the pieces, all by Brahms, were the Hungarian Dances Nos. 7, 1 and 2 and the famous Lullaby.

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chris.pasles@latimes.com