These three did it. They have become icons, loved for their artistic attitudes as much as for their quirks. Mischa Maisky, in shimmering shirts, holding up the flag of romance; Gidon Kremer, the personified musical conscience; Martha Argerich, the coolest pianist in the world. They come together to commemorate the concert agent Georg Hörtnagel, who died in 2020.
As a trio in the Isarphilharmonie, they are the main actors in a piece that deals with the joys of making music among great musicians. There is no question that they are: eminent interpreters, musicians of the century who are rightly revered. But this three-way constellation is not entirely unproblematic. It is true that Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich work together on a dramaturgy in Beethoven’s second cello sonata, stormy and urgent in cello cantilenas and glass, sparkling piano triplets, withdrawing at the right moment and with witty wit in the rondo. However, Gidon Kremer has lost the ease with which these two fill the score with life. In his best moments, especially in Mieczysław Weinberg’s fifth violin sonata, he achieves a painfully fragile tone that fits into the pale sound world of Shostakovich’s friend. You can feel a lot of the power of expression that Kremer has always distinguished.
But often, for example in the pieces performed solo (a simple serenade by Valentin Silvestrov and Igor Loboda’s “Requiem”, dedicated to the victims of the 2014 Ukraine conflict), Kremer loses control. Then tones are not formed, but fall to the ground as raw material. That doesn’t do too much harm to Shostakovich’s second piano trio. The folk-inspired melodies win through the cutting fiddle tone, and Argerich and Maisky make up for the rest with sound culture, so that after the soul-soothing encore of Schubert’s “Du bist die Ruh” there are standing ovations: applause for memorable concert moments, but also for a great past.