Prom 54: Beethoven for Three

Johannes Brahms
Piano Trio No.2 in C major Op.87

Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Trio No.7 in B flat major, Op. 97 ‘Archduke

Encores:
Schubert Piano Trio No.1 In B-Flat Major, D.898, II Andante un poco mosso
John Williams Theme from Schindler’s List

Emanuel Ax
piano

Leonidas Kavakos
violin

Yo‐Yo Ma
cello

This sell-out televised matinée of seminal Viennese piano trios, starry soloists at the helm, was conceived originally as a ‘Beethoven for Three’ project built around the Op.70 Trios and Shai Wosner’s transcription of the First Symphony, changed subsequently to feature Wosner’s arrangement of the Pastoral (recorded by these artists, Sony 19658739372) coupled with the Archduke. At short notice, days ago, the Pastoral was discarded in favour of Brahms’s Second Trio – which ‘standard’ programme Leonidas Kavakos, Yo‐Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax will be taking to Hamburg and Vienna during the coming week. Why, disappointingly, the symphony was dropped is unclear. Wosner, a former Juilliard student of Ax’s, is a creatively imaginative classicist up there with the best, his believable translations bringing an inventive angle to trio recital planning. 

Chamber concerts in the Royal Albert Hall rarely work. This ‘Hall of Arts and Sciences’, opened by Victoria in 1871, was never intended for such occasions. 5000 souls, give or take, dampen the acoustic detrimentally, the distance to the stage from Door 12, even 3 or 9, defocussing texture and dynamics. 500 in the clarity of the Wigmore kammersaal get an altogether different sonic perspective. 

So, what to make of this Prom? Listening on replay, a positively engineered broadcast, the level, finesse and balancing of the music-making discerningly conveyed, only occasionally congested in the tutti mixes. In the hall, Stalls J, underwhelming, the extent of detail and intimacy largely lost, Ax seemingly resigned to a back seat role, projecting less purposefully than Kavakos or Ma (open lid notwithstanding),  transient slips compounding an apparent diffusion of incident. Such inner fire as there was flickered more than flamed. High points of the Archduke were the effervescence and ‘grand’ interpolations of the scherzo and the expressive intensity of the slow movement Liszt loved so much, less convincing the moderated emphases of the finale. The Brahms boasted crafted lines and muscularity, yet, like the Beethoven, came across somehow needing beginnings more than endings to breathe and reach for greater things. Lending showtime to proceedings, two hours of theatrical fog pierced by ‘London Blitz’ searchlights proved an intrusive gimmick. 

Two in memoriam encores. The E-flat Andante from Schubert’s swansong First Trio, remembering Rosemary Gent, ‘eyes and ears’ Artistic Administrator of the Proms (1999-2010), who died last December. And the Theme from Schindler’s List, arranged for the trio by John Williams, here and there emotion getting the better of intonation. Ax’s Polish-Jewish parents were Holocaust survivors.