United States Isaac Stern Memorial Concert – Brahms, ‘Maxim Vengerov and Friends’: Maxim Vengerov, Vilde Frang (violins), James Ehnes (viola), Daniel Müller-Schott (cello), Yefim Bronfman (piano), Anthony McGill (clarinet). Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, 16.12.2025. (ES-S)
Brahms – Piano Quintet in F minor, Op.34; Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op.115
An all-Brahms program can easily invite a sense of monumentality, given the music’s density and Brahms’s long association with symphonic density. Yet the ‘Vengerov and Friends’ concert at Carnegie Hall resisted such expectations in favor of something more probing: Brahms heard as a composer of dialogue, tension and inward complexity, qualities that lie at the heart of his chamber writing. The evening, which involved musicians with strong individual voices and experience, unfolded as a genuinely collaborative reading, a priority that aligns naturally with Vengerov’s second season as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist.
The Piano Quintet in F minor remains one of Brahms’s most complex chamber statements, its turbulent surface concealing a long and difficult gestation. That sense of internal pressure was evident from the outset, though the performance resisted any temptation to cast the work as a bluntly symphonic object. At the same time, the opening exposed moments of coordination unease between piano and strings that occasionally resurfaced later. Bronfman avoided asserting himself as a dominant presence, staying closely attuned to the surrounding texture. Power was held in check, at times at the expense of a more elastic sense of flow.
Among the strings, leadership circulated rather than settled, though not always with complete unanimity of direction or expressive character. Maxim Vengerov’s presence was felt less through overt leadership than through inflection, shaping transitions through subtle changes of articulation, timing and color. Vilde Frang brought a tensile, finely focused sound that sharpened the music’s inner tensions, although her contributions often remained coolly contained. James Ehnes’s viola lines were marked by an inward focus, lending harmonic weight and expressive concentration from within the texture, particularly in passages where the viola introduces or reframes key motivic material. Daniel Müller-Schott’s cello playing likewise avoided rhetorical excess, keeping the bass line flexible and mobile, even at moments when coordination between voices proved fragile.
The Allegro non troppo unfolded with a controlled, measured trajectory, tension accumulating gradually with little sense of youthful ardor. The movement’s structure was clearly articulated, climaxes emerging cautiously. In the Andante, the piano’s understated phrasing set an opening of notable reserve, the strings responding in kind. Expressive weight surfaced slowly, with the balance consistently maintained and inwardness kept within narrow bounds.
The third movement prioritized rhythmic exactitude over forward momentum, its C-major trio section emerging with chorale-like solidity rather than warmth. In the Finale, veiled opening sonorities were allowed to hover before giving way to more animated writing, though without a sustained sense of propulsion. In the Poco sostenuto, a sequence bringing forward the piano and cello suggested a concentrated expressive intensity within a contained frame and evoked Brahms’s Beethovenian inheritance. Throughout, clarity of voicing took precedence over sweep or romantic souffle, framing the quintet less as an impassioned statement than as a coolly chamber argument. The reading suggested that the reunion of distinguished musical voices does not in itself guarantee interpretive unanimity or a performance of singular distinction.
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B minor inhabits a markedly different expressive terrain. It is often understood as a work of retrospection, suffused with nostalgia and the quiet sadness of a composer in the autumn of his life, but the interpreters seemed reluctant to fully embrace that Romantic self-reflective impulse. Instead, they favored poise, tonal refinement and balance over emotional abandon, resulting in a reading marked by measured emotional distance.
From his first entrance, Anthony McGill shaped the clarinet’s long phrases with warmth and discretion, relying on subtle dynamic changes within extended legato lines that tempered overt yearning. His playing was imbued with an almost improvisatory quality, most evident in the rhapsodic central episode of the Adagio where it evoked a sense of late warmth and mellowed color instead of unrelieved melancholy. The string quartet provided a balanced backdrop, with Vengerov, the evening’s host, favoring blend over projection. Nevertheless, the ensemble often appeared content to take a step back, particularly when greater resonance might have anchored the texture more firmly.
In the Andantino, rhythmic flexibility and buoyant articulation softened the movement’s contours, edging it toward the pastoral. Phrases breathed naturally, and McGill’s playing retained a spontaneous quality without indulging in overt rubato or rhetorical display. The finale, a set of variations built on material related to the opening movement, was articulated with clarity and composure. Individual variations were clearly differentiated in character without being sharply profiled, the emphasis remaining on continuity rather than contrast. At the close, Brahms’s quiet recall of the first movement’s theme was shaped with admirable dynamic control, the opening theme’s return dissolving quietly, almost like an evanescent breath.
This was Carnegie Hall’s annual Isaac Stern Memorial Concert. The evening invited reflection on Stern’s lifelong passion for chamber music and Brahms, and on his belief that music’s power lies not in technical polish but in its capacity to communicate and connect – a conception that the evening’s ensemble honored in intention but did not fully convey.
Edward Sava-Segal