It was a good idea to place these three works together on one well-filled disc, although in order to achieve the triptych it was necessary, in the Mozart, to exchange the viola for the cello. “Certainly Yo-Yo’s playing gives one the feeling Mozart would have approved”, declares Richard Stoltzman in his chatty booklet essay – but then he would hardly tell us the opposite. In fact the two instruments by no means sound the same even when, as here, they are given the same notes (no octave transpositions are necessary), but this cellist’s golden-toned mastery makes the substitution acceptable. Yet while he and and his eminent colleagues may disarm in this respect, for my taste their performance is somewhat fussy, with disturbing little rhythmic and tonal pushes.
The Beethoven and Brahms – the former an early work, the latter a late one – are much more successful. Stoltzman’s bright clarinet contributes much to Beethoven’s perky first movement and genial variation finale (on an operatic tune of stunning banality by Joseph Weigl), while Ma is winningly songful in the Adagio. Throughout, Emanuel Ax is both witty and firmly supportive. Yet it is for the Brahms above all that I would recommend this disc: here is a reading that digs deep emotionally yet keeps its sense of proportion. This, writes Stoltzman, is “a kind of chamber music that musicians just love – intimate contrapuntal conversation on beauty and pathos” – and the performance bears him out. Sony’s engineers and 20-bit technology have given these fine artists admirable sound.
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