The Covid restrictions are still hanging behind the concert organizers. Just the effort of making up for a concert that was planned for the Philharmonie im Gasteig in the much smaller Herkulessaal: Who gets which seats? And why waste space? It’s lonely on the big podium when only two people are making music. And so there are now seats behind Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky on stage, almost 80 in four rows. The critic sits up there too.
At first the sound is surprising when Maisky and Argerich begin Beethoven’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 5 No. 2; it is indirect, blurred. The lid of the grand piano is open on the other side, the brilliance is missing at almost the same height as the musicians. With the cello it’s the other way round, you can hear the treble well, but the middle register disappears, and all that remains of the bass is a whirring. Instead, something else is transferred. The strong rhythm that Argerich and Maisky put into Beethoven has a physical effect. Stomping, pedaling, bowing – that’s audible as raw energy. Unfamiliar, also because one has to do without the usual characteristics of an interpretation: phrasings cannot be grasped in their entirety, especially not on the cello. But Beethoven also convinces as pure energy.
That suits Debussy even better. In his sonata for cello and piano, the individual parts have space, are less divided into accompaniment and solo, but complement each other. The grandiose interplay of Maisky and Argerich can finally be heard from behind. It is different with Chopin’s op. 65. Here, where phasing means so much, the music is lost if it is not audible. But the unusual closeness to the artists reveals something else: Argerich’s tattered notes or her hands, comparatively small but traversed by thick tendons. Your playing technique, close to the keys, no big arm movements, but power from your fingers. A new perspective with bewitching intimacy.