Chamber music brings out new aspects of players

The pianists in the first chamber music session were Marko Mustonen, Sofya Gulyak and Irina Zahharenkova. And it really was interesting to see what different impressions they gave in the chamber music repertoire!

Playing the Ravel Trio with Marko Mustonen were Annemarie Åström, violin, and Markus Hohti, cello. This, to my mind, was the best chamber music performance of the first session. Marko made fine allowance for the cello tone and his playing was the best balanced. And he did not hesitate to adopt a solo approach when the music so required. The timings were well thought out and the sound was homogeneous. The only shortcomings, though I did find them disturbing throughout the work, were the slightly monotonous harmony colouring and Marko’s habit of sometimes breaking up long lines of melody and harmony. The elasticity of the microstructures suffered as a result. In particular the long unison melody at the beginning of the third movement somehow lacked shape. Though I have to admit that it’s an extremely difficult passage and the bass register of the F-Musiikki Steinway is clearly difficult for anyone to handle pianissimo. In any case the chamber music performance by Marko Mustonen was a fine and well-balanced entity.

Sofya Gulyak had chosen the Brahms Trio op. 101, and her performance raised a lot of questions. Firstly, I have to say that Gulyak’s tone is at times no less than astounding and her skill at the keyboard was once again superb. She managed the difficult chord jumps and other technical problems in the Brahms with no trouble whatsoever. On the other hand Russian, Finnish and German culture did seem to collide in a slightly fruitless way as regards both tone and the music in general. Gulyak’s tone was totally different from that of the other members of the trio, Reeta Maalismaa, violin, and Joel Laakso, cello. The performance seemed the whole time to be divided tone-wise into two camps, which in turn made the clear profiling of the characters difficult. Gulyak seemed to balance her playing as if she were executing a solo piano work and did not prioritise according to what is most important in the piano texture and what is just background. I also wonder why she chose the Brahms Trio. It sounded very Russian, but not in the manner of, say, Gilels or Richter playing Brahms, in which the Russian element is an asset. Now it sounded more like Tchaikovsky, which to me was a little bewildering.

Irina Zahharenkova played the Trio no. 2 op. 67 by Dmitri Shostakovich with Reeta Maalismaa and Joel Laakso. I was particularly struck in their performance by how difficult it is to play with great control in the bass register on that instrument – which was also the one played by Marko Mustonen. The bass in the piano entry at the beginning of the Trio rumbled too loudly too my mind and the mysterious atmosphere suffered. The balance in general was not perfect in this performance. Zahharenkova demonstrated that she is also capable of playing forcefully and dynamically, and the climax was magnificent. Yet the performance left me with a slightly anaemic impression. Obviously any chamber music work needs more rehearsal time than is allowed in this competition. But I nevertheless felt the string players and the pianist disagreed over the interpretation to a disturbing degree. In the third movement, particularly, I felt they could have agreed on the phrasing beforehand. The piano chords and the strings’ melody were to my mind too unconnected. Zahharenkova proved just what a magnificent pianist she is in the first and second rounds. Maybe she wasn’t quite at her best in the chamber music finals.

Risto-Matti Marin