Arabella Steinbacher

Author: Andrew Throdahl

Over the past two years, I have occasionally found myself double-tasking at performing arts series concerts, working as the page-turner as well as the critic. The artists have never known about my agency with The Middlebury Campus - as far as they know I am just a fledgling dot-follower, not an analyst scrutinizing their every gesture both backstage and onstage. Alas, last Friday evening my secret was leaked, and the artists - German violinist Arabella Steinbacher and Latvian pianist Robert Kulek - confronted me about my undercover operation.

"You cheat," taunted Kulek, "you better say nice things about us!"

Leak or not, I really and truly can only think of nice things to say about both artists. The concert was one of those events that thoroughly alters your disposition and makes you feel as if all of your obligations, like writing concert reviews, are utterly arbitrary. After the concert I wanted to barge in on some students practicing the corrosively monotonous song "Clocks" and ask how they were not devastated by simply being in the aura of brilliance. But I didn't.

Steinbacher and Kulek's exhausting program was built on odd pairings. The first half juxtaposed Beethoven's bubbly eighth violin sonata with Schnittke's frantic first. The second half heard an equally unusual alliance: the spiritual Bach Chaconne and the cosmopolitan Ravel sonata. While these pieces did not agree with each other, per se, they did create a balance that is sometimes missing in the usual chronological progression from Baroque to Classical to Romantic to Modern.

The attention to the architecture of the program was paralleled by structural know-how in the performance. Every piece, movement and phrase was distinguished by an appropriate character and timbre. Within the Beethoven one felt like each movement had its own personality, while not straying tastelessly from the work's over-arching character.

The duo seemed to milk as much charm from the Beethoven as they could. Kulek's wit and technical finesse let him get away with some harsh attacks, particularly in the third movement. From the start, Steinbacher's playing was clean, energetic and colorful.

For many audience members the highlight of the evening was probably Schnittke's profane first sonata. The artists were undaunted by the work's debauchery, and certainly gave the many crazed, brazen passages their all, but they still exercised the necessary control to make the piece comprehensible. Kulek set a steady tempo for the faster movements, which ultimately added to the excitement. Steinbacher's harmonics at the end of the third movement were so precise that they eerily silenced all coughing and seat-shifting. The violin's cadenza in the fourth movement, signaled by a deafening cluster in the piano, was so rigorously exact, yet still expressive, that it made me think she would play a terrific Berg concerto (which, I later learned, is indeed part of her repertoire).

Steinbacher did beautiful things to Bach's Chaconne, the famous final movement of the Partita No. 2 in D minor for unaccompanied violin. It is rare to hear the distinct moods of the work played with dogmatic contrapuntal detail. She shifted from a coarse treatment of the opening quadruple-stops to a thinner, bleaker tone in many of the interior episodes. The overall result was a part headstrong, part haunting Chaconne, both studied and enterprising.

As she arrived backstage after that winning performance she outrageously exclaimed, "Terrible!"

One thing that was missing from the unaccompanied Chaconne was Kulek's singing. Throughout the Beethoven especially, the pianist could not help but hum, murmur and warble his way through his favorite parts. This quirk seemed to be symptomatic of his ardor for the music, like his habit of throwing his hands in his lap and turning impetuously to his partner during pauses, and can therefore only be excused, if not embraced.

To close the evening, Kulek rejoined Steinbacher for a successful Ravel Sonata. After the 15-minute Chaconne, Steinbacher was still amazingly energetic. Both lucidly commanded the work's economic textures, and held back until virtually the last bars. The "Blues" movement must be one of the most bizarre pieces in Ravel's output, in the same vein as the opera "L'enfant et les sortileges," and Kulek especially took advantage of the movement's capricious possibilities. The "perpetual motion" finale was a fitting finish for two well-matched virtuosi.

As an encore, the duo played the ultimate in nostalgic kitsch, "Estrellita" by Manuel Ponce, arranged by Jascha Heifetz, and then called it a night.

Kulek was an impressive and enthusiastic performer, but the real star of the evening was the 28-year-old Steinbacher. She seems to possess the simplicity of purpose that is often the hallmark of great artists. Hers is a solemn and direct artistry, rather than a self-conscious one. The pianist Martha Argerich once said in an interview, "One must try to achieve directness with music," and Steinbacher is equipped with all the technique and poise to make music incomparably forthright to every audience she plays for.