A YOUNG INTERPRETIVE PALETTE FILLED WITH SHADES OF SOUND
By Allan Kozinn
The New York Times
May 2, 2007 Wednesday
Late Edition – Final
Sometimes beauty of tone is everything, and sometimes it can turn
a meaty work into nothing but ear candy. It depends on the music at
hand, and a musician’s sense of when to luxuriate in tonal richness
and when to let other qualities seize the moment.
The young Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan is still finding that
balance, but he is a powerful, appealing player who can produce a
stunning effect when he lands on the right side of the line.
On Monday evening Mr. Khachatryan played a recital at Zankel Hall
with his sister, Lusine Khachatryan, as his pianist in the Franck
and Shostakovich Sonatas. But he began on his own, with the Bach
Chaconne (from BWV 1004). There is probably no more assertive way
to begin a violin recital than with this towering, unaccompanied set
of variations.
Mr. Khachatryan’s technique is up to it: his chordal passages were
solid and precise, and his bowing is sufficiently deft to create the
illusion of counterpoint. Interpretively, he seemed to be of another
time: where the music was spacious, he played with the lush vibrato
of the pre-Heifetz era, and he used a much broader dynamic range than
violinists typically use in Bach now.
Much of the time, this nostalgic rebellion against contemporary
interpretive strictures worked in Mr. Khachatryan’s favor. There
are many ways to mine the drama in the Bach Chaconne, and it turns
out that even a touch of melodrama can work. However much you might
quibble on historical grounds, Mr. Khachatryan made his case.
On the other hand, the Franck Sonata, which is meant to be dramatic,
was rarely more than just pretty. (O.K., very pretty.) Here Mr.
Khachatryan turned up the heat on his violin sound, and seductive
though that tightly focused sound can be, it didn’t set the Franck on
fire. Ms. Khachatryan shared some of the responsibility here. She is
a superb pianist, with a big sound and a fiery technique, but often
she seemed as if she were giving her own performance of the Franck
and didn’t much care whether it had a violin line or not.
These problems vanished in the Shostakovich Sonata (Op. 134), in which
Mr. Khachatryan played the Allegretto with the vigor and harshness
that the score demands, and the outer movements with a sometimes icy,
sometimes moodily introspective touch.
A few encores let Mr. Khachatryan revisit the extremes of
his interpretive palette: Rachmaninoff’s "Vocalise" was bathed
in sweetness and warmth, and Khachaturian’s "Sabre Dance" had an
invigorating brashness.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
