The Classical Review

On the poster outside Carnegie Hall announcing Thursday’s recital, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis received equal billing. It made sense, given their partnership dating back to 1988 and their Grammy-winning Beethoven recordings.

Inside the hall, however, there was no question who the star was, with Mutter’s name printed twice as large in the program as the pianist’s. That made a kind of sense too, considering Mutter’s multifaceted, international career as performer, humanitarian and muse to contemporary composers. Furthermore, the program’s rich, no-added-sugar menu of Mozart, ambitious Romantic works and women composers reflected Mutter’s well-known priorities.

It was perhaps inevitable that the fame imbalance between the performers would bleed over into the performance itself. For all Orkis’s fluent technique, crisp attack and musical insight, his playing was, as it were, printed in smaller type than his partner’s. That left Mutter floating serenely above it all, displaying her undeniably marvelous tonal range and artful phrasing, but bereft of the kind of sparks that fly when two musicians really mix it up.

As a child star, Mutter first made her mark in Mozart concertos, and that composer has remained a touchstone for her ever since. It might have been too much on Thursday to expect her to take the back seat that Mozart assigned her to in his “Sonata for pianoforte with violin accompaniment” in G major, K. 301, but giving Orkis freer rein at the keyboard would not have detracted from her witty and lyrical responses.

In the end, however, Mozart’s matchless abundance of ideas shone through every bar of the sonata-form first movement and the eventful finale in dancing 6/8 meter.

Schubert was hunting bigger game in his four-movement Fantasy in C major, D. 934, one of the monumental works from his last year. Orkis leaned forward and shook out his arms before tackling the page after page of tremolo Schubert gives the pianist in the Fantasy’s opening movement. The effect, with Mutter’s violin soaring high and sweet above, was magical.

Orkis’s fingers were in perpetual, pearly motion in the Allegretto, with Mutter first commenting drily, then joining in the scurrying about. The ensuing theme-and-variations displayed both players’ technical prowess, variety of touch and dramatic timing.

The magic tremolos returned to herald the robust, folksy theme of the finale, with its brilliant episodes and a softly flowing interlude before the final dash to the end. Mutter bestowed a hug on her collaborator in recognition of an interpretive mountain well climbed.

In a contemporary review that’s slightly cringey to read today, Clara Schumann’s Three Romances, Op. 22, were praised as “truly sincere” and “written in a delicate, fragrant hand.”  From a seat in Row T on Thursday, one can’t testify as to how fragrant the players’ hands were, but they certainly handled these Romantic miniatures with care—maybe a little too much care, given Schumann’s fame as a virtuoso pianist.

The set opened with short, breathless violin phrases over a roaming piano, then picked up speed in the playful second piece, which could have used more propulsive pianism. Similarly, the final piece, marked “passionate, fast,” was nicely shaped by the duo, but the rumbling and rippling piano understated those sudden spurts of feeling characteristic of both Schumanns. Without those high points, the diminuendo ending lost some dramatic effect.

Mutter brought the Iranian composer Aftar Darvishi onstage to introduce her violin solo piece Likoo before it received its world premiere. Darvishi, who was educated at Tehran University and subsequently studied and pursued composing opportunities in the Netherlands and the U.K., spoke briefly, dedicating her piece not only to Mutter, who commissioned it, but to women in Iran who have suffered or died while protesting against the strictures of the country’s fundamentalist regime.

Likoo is an Iranian type of mugham, an elastic term for a traditional genre that takes different forms in different Central Asian countries, but is typically a lament for instrumental ensemble. Darvishi’s Likoo found Mutter alone onstage, intoning a tender, hesitant monologue at first, but accelerating into rapid string-crossing passages that sounded angry or exuberant by turns. Bachian arpeggios in chorale-like harmonies alternated with moments of frozen largo, and the piece closed on one of those moments, with a single pianissimo high note vanishing into air—a most effective diminuendo ending this time, which left the listener contemplating the fragility of life.

Respighi’s Sonata in B minor for Violin and Piano proved anything but fragile—a muscular late-Romantic work that announced its intentions with a robust opening theme on the violin’s beefy G string. Heifetz was an early advocate for this piece, and the sweetness and generous vibrato of his tone seemed to inform Mutter’s supple rendering of the lyrical second theme. In the turbulent piano part, Orkis sounded modest at first, but eventually rose up to challenge his partner, who responded vibrantly.

Orkis introduced the Andante espressivo with a rhapsodic solo, then added characterful interjections as Mutter unfurled and shaped a long melody. The music intensified steadily to a taut climax with cadenza-like violin flourishes. Through it all, Mutter’s singing tone was beautiful and consistent in all registers. The subtlety with which she slipped a phrase under one of Orkin’s at the close seemed to testify to their long partnership.

In a nod to Brahms and his Fourth Symphony, the sonata ended with a passacaglia, or variations on a bass line. For all the music’s orchestral character, the focus Thursday was on the violinist: her virtuosity in scale passages, slashing attacks, taut line even in the slower variations, fine tapering of phrases. After providing solid support throughout, Orkis led the way into the bright sunshine of the coda, concluding the sonata with that accompanist’s dream, a massive fortissimo in the piano’s lowest register that earned him Hug No. 2 from the laughing soloist.

The bonhomie carried over into the first encore, Brahms’s zippy Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor, played with the traditional enormous rubato, sometimes in unexpected places. Two encores of lyrical character followed, with plenty of swoopy portamento that fit their style. 

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis repeat the program 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. etix.com