Cellist and Pianist, United by Passion and Power

By STEVE SMITH
For a relatively unknown performer to make a splash in New York is no simple matter. But when Friedrich Kleinhapl, an Austrian cellist, and Andreas Woyke, a German pianist, arrived on Tuesday night to play a program featuring Beethoven’s first three cello sonatas (Op. 5, Nos. 1 and 2, and Op. 69), they had several things working in their favor.


First was the location: Mr. Kleinhapl and Mr. Woyke, who have performed and recorded together since 2003, appeared at the Austrian Cultural Forum, whose intimate concert hall is among the city’s best chamber-music spaces. Second, they were well equipped; the forum provides a small but powerful Bösendorfer piano, and Mr. Kleinhapl plays a magnificent 1743 Guadagnini cello, albeit one fitted with modern titanium parts and steel strings.


Most important, these players had a vision they wanted to express. Speaking from the stage before the concert, Mr. Kleinhapl, a self-avowed Romantic, said he had come to Beethoven late, initially resistant to the tidy charms of Viennese Classicism. But by reading up on the composer’s life and listening to recordings by the pianist Friedrich Gulda, he had come to see Beethoven as a figure of Romantic intensity and unsettling power: paradoxically or not, the view long promulgated by the mass media.

Liberties, almost needless to say, were taken. Mr. Kleinhapl plied his instrument’s gorgeous woody tone with an oversize ardor, shaping lines as a singer might. Mr. Woyke, also a composer, improviser and jazz performer, pushed and pulled tempos, exaggerated dynamics and lingered over pauses, to striking effect.

Purists would have been scandalized. But Mr. Kleinhapl and Mr. Woyke supported their idiosyncratic vision of Beethoven with unimpeachable virtuosity and a thrilling unanimity of spirit. The intensity with which they listened and responded to each other’s impetuous gestures was its own reward, but they also shed new light on these familiar pieces.

Alone, Mr. Kleinhapl played two brief modern works: “Monologi” by Oistein Sommerfeldt, a Norwegian composer, and the cadenza from Mr. Gulda’s Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra. Though neither approached the audacity of the Beethoven interpretations, each offered an effective showcase for Mr. Kleinhapl’s abundant skill and unbridled passion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/arts/music/01austrian.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss