The young musicians couldn’t have been better partners, joining in a stunning force of emotive power, and setting a degree of excellence as fine as many of us had ever heard in this hall. While taken collectively, Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas do not represent the entire span of the composer’s life − the last was published 15 years before his death – they are nevertheless unwaveringly inviting, perhaps no less so because Beethoven scored the two instruments as absolute equals.
This equal rights convention − while hardly the sonata “norm” − raises the “Kreutzer” to what one musicologist calls a “concerto for two”. Published as the composer’s Op.47, it embraces a huge range of moods and melodies, consistently putting tremendous technical demands on the players. It was originally dedicated to the gifted violinist George Bridgewater who, almost incredibly, sight-read his part at the work’s première in 1803, Beethoven himself at the piano. Furious at the violinist’s criticism of one of his close female friends, Beethoven later withdrew Bridgewater’s name, dedicating the sonata instead to violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, who never actually performed it, and had little to say of it beyond that was "outrageously unintelligible”.
Fortunately, Julia Fischer and Igor Levit proved something else entirely. After a sustained, lyrical beginning “for the sake of the single verse”, Fischer opened the fireworks of sound and complex clusters, maintaining absolute precision in the Adagio despite her almost warp speed. Her green silk gown moved with her as she played, and that with the poise, presence and elegance of a dancer. In the second movement, Andante con variationen the musicians passed melodies back and forth between them in a much quieter form of dialogue, Levit’s hands barely ever leaving the keyboard. The variations themselves contrasted as widely as from an otherworldly tinkling tone to the almost “digital” sound of Fischer’s pizzicato. The final Presto began with a powerful piano chord; apart from a handful of contrasting episodes, which even included an unexpected moment of sustained silence, the musicians seamlessly exchanged their instruments’ expressions of exuberance and joyousness at a thoroughbred’s tempo.
Levit’s physical interpretation was equally remarkable. His recovery from a given chord or attack often included a spontaneous gesture: a cupped hand momentarily poised in mid-air, a seeming sprinkling of a fine dust, a thwack of his palms down at his sides. In more turbulent passages, he almost jumped up twice from the seat. But what I liked best was the “C” figure his body made as he leaned down and over the keys, his nose often a mere six inches from the notes. The curve/straight alteration of that bench gesture made a strong visual pulse that nicely reflected the acoustical body.