Concert to Benefit
Presented by Brandeis University and BankBoston Celebrity Series
At: Jordan Hall, Saturday night
Three wonderful hours of music celebrated the 50th birthday of Brandeis University and the life achievement of Andrei Sakharov Saturday night in Jordan Hall, an occasion organized to benefit the Sakharov Archives at the university.The event brought together leading musicians associated with Brandeis -- the Lydian String Quartet, and composer/pianist Yehudi Wyner -- together with eminent Russian musicians withpersonal or family connections to Sakharov: cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, violinist Vladimir Spivakov, and pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn, son of writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, along with two special guests, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt, and the 11-year-old pianist Bronika Kushkuley.The program, too, had a strong emphasis on music of inner emigration by the leading composers of Sakharov's time, Shostakovich and the Schnittke. In tribute to Brandeis and its heritage, Spivakov also programmed Bloch's ``Nigun,'' from ``Three Pictures of Chassidic Life.'' The concert began on an unfortunate note because no one had checked to make sure the piano bench had been readjusted to Kushkuley's height. The pianist took a long time trying to screw it up into position, but she never really succeeded, and never recovered the radiant poise that marked her entrance; by the time she was playing, she looked frightened and sounded flustered. The virtuoso passages in Schumann's ``ABEGG'' Variations and Liszt's ``La Leggierezza'' were impressive, but not invariably controlled or even accurate, and there was no lightness in the Liszt, which is what the piece is about; she tends to use the pedal as an on-off switch. Occasional quiet moments, as in the close of the variations and the opening of the etude, suggested a quality of musical instinct, sensitivity, and imagination that is rare; this deserves to be nurtured rather than exploited.Rostropovich called the tune in the adagio from Schubert's String Quintet D. 956, played at a tempo that suspended time -- if he and the Lydian Quartet had programmed the entire work and played it like this, we'd all still be there. The performers did sustain the tempo and kept in tune, and to watch and hear Rostropovich's interplay with violinist Daniel Stepner was inspiring. The Shostakovich Piano Quintet, Op. 57, brought the Lyds together with Solzhenitsyn in an emotionally compelling performance, marked by a particularly intense and rapt performance of the slow central fugue. Solzhenitsyn's solo piece was the Bartok Sonata, which he played with invigorating delineation of the folk-rhythms, wonderful dynamic control, and imaginative tonal colorations.Hunt, in scarlet silk and gold looking like a lacquered princess on a Palekh box, poured out sumptuous tone in five Rachmaninoff songs, molding it with an instrumentalist's sensitivity to line, and capturing every flicker of the poetry; Wyner's accompaniments were masterly in economy, color, and voicing. Spivakov, working with his regular and highly accomplished pianist Sergei Bezrodny, offered the Bloch, a Schubert waltz, and Schnittke's First Violin Sonata, a piece that embraces everything from Bach to ``La Cucaracha.'' His playing was spectacular in volume, vibrato, assurance, effect, and, one suspects, intent.Rostropovich closed the program with Solzhenitsyn providing alert support -- it was Rostropovich, hearing young Ignat at the family piano in Vermont, who suggested serious musical study.Rostropovich's performances of short works by Marcello, Weber, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Bach put Spivakov's formidable achievement into another perspective, because the cellist has achieved such simplicity and depth. On the instrument he was born to play, Rostropovich can do everything he or anyone else could ever imagine, but he's learned he doesn't have to; he just enters into the music,participates in it, shares it.