That was not only a thrilling musical experience in the fully occupied Great Hall of the Mozarteum, it was also an intense enlightenment of knowledge: Chamber music is nothing less than music theater or the great symphony concert. Five soloists in the very first category, who had long been friends and musicians together, had come together to perform Robert Schumann’s piano quartet op.47 and his piano quintet op.44 and in between five fugues from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Part II in the string quartet version by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to offer. The violin stylist Isabelle Faust played the concert master of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, soloist and chamber musician Anne Katharina Schreiber, the viola hero Antoine Tamestit, the cellist all-rounder Jean-Guihen Queyras and the master of various historical grand pianos and pianos, Alexander Melnikov. This time he shone on a Johann Streicher grand piano, model 1847.
That alone made one, if not the huge difference to other performances of the two Schumann pieces. Where the three or four strings in the respective corner movements often try not to drown in the billowing Steinway floods, thanks to Melnikow a wonderfully coordinated, lively piano playing could be heard, which inspired violins, viola and cello as witty and fiery as the strings did Pianists. Tamestit and Queyras leaned towards each other in the quintet, while Queyras smiled enticingly at Isabelle Faust, while the violinist herself took the initiative and together they all made the funeral march of the quintet so dry, growling and bitter, as if the music only wanted to move extremely haltingly . In contrast, in both works they portrayed the Scherzi flying virtuoso, the quick finals with relish and with the courage to take risks. It was an elementary event of joy in playing, intellectual wit and luminous sound.
Here the plays were not executed, but made to shine
Now one could be quite skeptical when five virtuosos of such rank rush to such ingeniously interwoven pieces that set the highest demands on fantasy, spirit, irony and deeper meaning and execute them according to all the rules of their artistic and technical abilities. This can lead to sometimes fascinating moments of happiness, but often also end in happy noise based on the volume of sound, technical bravery and the principle that everyone for himself and everyone against everyone.
That too can be great fun for those involved, and to admire five such stage animals in the wild amuses and satisfies the curiosity of some audiences. But the goal of playing together to the best of our knowledge and belief, i.e. to act symphonically and, if successful, to allow the respective piece of music to emerge in its entire shape, landscape and spatiality, can fall by the wayside, even if the The gloss of the names and the undoubted quality of the pure instrumental mastery can dazzle.
This evening was certainly also great instrumental theater, to quote a word from the composer Mauricio Kagel. Because whoever goes on a stage and performs something there, be he an actor, singer, acrobat or musician, it is always a theatrical act with all visual values, in which in this case, in addition to the attractiveness of the instruments, the movements of the respective instrumental craft have the same effect the gestures and facial expressions of the performers in interaction, their dialogue with the eyes or with the questioning and answering clarity of the phrasing.
Isabelle Faust is one of those soloists who can and wants to portray the music of different centuries in different ways. Whether Bach’s violin-piano sonatas or André Jolivet’s 2nd Violin Concerto from 1938, Faust does not violin anything based on a sound model he has found, but always orientates himself towards the requirements of the respective music. By the way, Jolivet’s concert bears a motto, a saying of the Hopi Indians, which also seems to exactly match Isabelle Faust’s essence and music-making: “The essence of man is sound, sound produces light, and the spirit shows itself in light.”
This spirit also reigns in the grandiose violist Antoine Tamestit, which also has a trembling passion. How he attacked the C-string of his Stradivarius viola defiantly, almost angrily and then complained with a completely different timbre on the G-string remains unforgettable. With Jean-Guihen Queyras, improvisational freedom of phrasing seems to arise directly from his cello. By the way, Schumann demands a scordature in the coda in the Adagio of his piano quartet, the cellist has to play in the middle of the movement while the others play, tuning the C-string lower on B. Queyras took care of that with an almost casual matter-of-factness. Anne Katharina Schreiber adapted herself perfectly to fire and devotion. This was particularly noticeable in the Bach-Mozart fugues, where transparency and precision of intonation are important so that the network of fugues can be experienced in all voices.
At the end thunderous applause, which the glorious five responded with the pizzicato scherzo from the 1967 piano quintet by the Polish-French composer and Auschwitz survivor Szymon Laks. There is no more laconic and charming way to dismiss an enthusiastic audience.