Last night’s soloist in the Faculty Artist Series of recitals at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music was violist Lodi Levitz, accompanied by student pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, who has already begun an impressive career of concertizing. Levitz’ was also joined by fellow faculty member, mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook. She prepared a program consisting entirely of works by Johannes Brahms structured in what she called “sandwich” form. The two viola sonatas of Opus 120 began and concluded the evening, with the two Opus 91 songs scored for alto, viola, and piano situated between the sonatas.
In introducing the sonatas to the audience, Levitz began by talking about Richard Mühlfeld, clarinetist with the Meiningen orchestra. Brahms had resolved to give up composing in 1890; but, not long after making that decision, he heard Mühlfeld perform. The diversity of sonorities that Mühlfeld coaxed out of his instrument had such a profound effect on Brahms that he composed, over a period of about three years, a trio for clarinet, cello, and piano (Opus 114), a quintet for clarinet and string quartet (Opus 115), and the two Opus 120 sonatas. Yes, the sonatas that Levitz performed were originally conceived for the clarinet.
To be fair, however, Brahms prepared his own rescoring of those sonatas for solo viola; and, as Levitz observed, each of these sonatas became a different piece of music in the process. Opus 120 thus offers perfect examples of why “the music itself” resides in a place far beyond those “dots on paper” (to once again appropriate a phrase I picked up from David Garner) that face the performer. The “difference that makes a difference” (as Marvin Minsky put it in his Society of Mind book) has to do with the acts of performing on the respective instruments; and those acts are differentiated not only by the sonorities of the instruments but also by the physics behind sound production.
The origin of any clarinet sound comes from a vibrating piece of stiff cane. That reed must be supple enough to vibrate under breath control; but, because of the stiffness, an initial burst of energy is required to set it in motion. Thus, while the clarinet is perfectly capable of playing softly, every articulated (as opposed to slurred) note must, of necessity, begin with the sharp attack of that energy burst (after which the performer can quickly lower the dynamic level to whatever is most suitable). Each string of the viola, on the other hand, is set in motion by myriad impulses provided by the coarseness of the horsehair bow. This gives the violist more flexibility in determining the “attack curve” for each note. The attack can be as abrupt as that of a clarinet (or of a piano hammer striking its strings); or it can be far more gradual.
What this means in performances of Opus 120 is that phrases that would have been more declamatory when performed on clarinet may now be rendered with greater subtlety on the viola. This is not to say that one instrument is “better” than the other when it comes to turning those “dots on paper” into music. It is only to assert that each instrument must “make the music” in different ways, making for different listening experiences on the audience side.
Levitz clearly appreciated the extent to which her capacity for subtlety made these sonatas far more than mere “rewrites” of clarinet music. Indeed, as I suggested in the above parenthesis, the underlying physics of her approach not only distinguished her from any clarinet solo; it also threw alternative lighting on the interplay between soloist and accompanist. In both sonatas the piano part abounds with the assertive attack sonorities that we encounter in so much of Brahms piano repertoire, and LaDeur was very much in his comfort zone when managing those sonorities. However, this means that the nature of the dialog with the soloist differs significantly from what ensues when the soloist is a clarinetist; and LaDeur gave every indication of appreciating and honoring this difference.
Other issues arose in the performance of the Opus 91 songs. The addition of the viola to the piano accompaniment was how Brahms conceived the instrumentation, and these are the only songs in which the piano is supplemented by another instrument. However, as Levitz observed in her opening remarks, the two songs are separated by a considerable period of time (about twenty years); and the order in which they were published is the reverse of the order in which they were composed. The second song was composed in 1863 as a wedding present for Joseph Joachim (the violinist for whom Brahms would later composer is Opus 102 “double” concerto in A minor) and his wife, the mezzo Amalie Schneeweiss. Entitled “Geistliches Wiegenlied” (sacred lullaby), it is a Nativity Scene set to Emanuel von Geibel’s German translation of a poem by Lope de Vega in which the viola plays a German folk carol. The first song was not composed until 1884, by which time Joachim had divorced his wife; and it may reflect Brahms reaction to that divorce through his text choice of Friedrich Rückert’s “Gestillte Sehnsucht” (stilled longing).
These are both short and intimate pieces. The core of expression resides in the mezzo’s interpretation of the text; and the viola is there somewhat to offer the comments of an “omniscient observer.” The interplay between Cook and Levitz captured that rather subtle relationship most effectively. The resulting performance was one in which each poem was executed by two narrators with complementing points of view. Brahms could not have been better served by such refined understanding, as perceptive as the sonata performances had been in distinguishing them from their clarinet versions.
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