United States Various: Dawoon Chung (piano), Joel Link (violin), Nathaniel Silberschlag (horn). Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 9.9.2026. (MSJ)
Glière – Four Pieces from Op.35 (Nos.6,7,10,11)
Fauré – Sonata for Piano and Violin No.1 in A major, Op.13
Brahms – Trio for Piano, Violin and Horn in E-flat major, Op.40
In a world where a lot of concerts seem to be thrown together without much thought, it is a joy to encounter a subtly crafted program like this one which launched the seventy-seventh season of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society with distinction. The players included two principals from the Cleveland Orchestra – concertmaster Joel Link (who is also principal violin of the Dover Quartet) and principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag – and the excellent pianist Dr. Dawoon Chung who concertizes worldwide.
The performance immediately established an intimate mood with the lights of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium dimming to darkness in the hall and minimal light on stage. This suited the romantic, nostalgic yearning of the four pieces selected from Reinhold Glière’s Op.35. The original publication was a set of pieces for various instruments, but this selection of the two horn pieces and adaptations of two pieces (Nos.6 and 7) for clarinet have become a standard of the horn repertory. Though written in 1908, the works sound like they could have come from decades earlier. The opening Romance (No.6) set the template of these miniatures: richly lyrical, with the piano cradling the singing horn in a rich atmosphere that is so harmonically conservative it makes Glière’s contemporary Rachmaninoff look like a wild-eyed modernist. But allowing the composer his preferences, they are lovely pieces, especially the sad waltz of No.7 and the darker No.10, which felt like a foreshadow of the Adagio mesto of the Brahms to come. Silberschlag played with a luminous and liquid tone akin to a great lyric tenor singing. Chung’s piano was no mere accompaniment and offered expressive framing and commentary to these instrumental songs.
One doesn’t normally think of French composer Gabriel Fauré as volatile, but placing his early violin sonata alongside the mellow Glière pieces emphasized its relative brilliance. Yet brilliance was far from the only descriptor of this performance by Joel Link on violin and Chung on piano. Perhaps a comparison is in order: there was a famous RCA recording made in 1959 by violinist Jascha Heifetz and pianist Brooks Smith. Though undeniably brilliant, that recording could be likened to a view of a beautiful landscape . . . from inside a speeding Ferrari. Link and Chung’s view of the landscape was much different: it had the freedom and flexibility of an eagle soaring and diving. The drive into exultant peaks in the first movement was tempered by moments of repose, allowing both sides of the work to make an impact. The slow second movement felt like a callback to the Glière romances although those were actually written quite a bit later. Particularly beguiling was the trio of the plucky Scherzo, one of those haunting yet elusive moments which make Fauré’s works feel like hidden gems. The Finale channeled future Fauré in its introspective interludes, but Link and Chung again balanced reverie with assured momentum, welling up with energy to close the sonata excitingly.
If the Fauré had brought increased textural complexity in the wake of the songful Glière, the Brahms Horn Trio climbed to yet another plane. All three musicians joined together in exploring the work’s rich layers and ambivalent emotions. Written in the aftermath of the death of the composer’s mother and featuring an instrument – the horn – which his father played, the work is laden with personal resonances. The lyrical but quietly anxious first movement was intricately characterized, with Link’s violin serving as introspective counterbalance against Silberschlag’s quietly urgent horn, and Chung’s piano – Brahms’s own instrument – caught between the two.
The Scherzo was a bracing contrast, high-spirited and unpredictable, though as always in Brahms with quickly shifting shadows lurking around the edges. The atmosphere changed abruptly with Chung’s tolling of the dark piano chords that introduce the infinitely sad slow movement, the one movement where the horn is allowed a passionate, full-throated climax. After the piercing close of the Adagio mesto, the finale took off at a hell of a clip, considering that Brahms’s tempo marking is Allegro con brio (‘fast with vigor’), not molto allegro (‘very fast’) nor presto (‘extremely fast’). That caveat aside, it was an exhilarating dash, a thrilling end to a program that amounted to an epic journey.
Mark Sebastian Jordan