Curtis Macomber is a pupil Joseph Fuchs who makes fine sense of the three sonatas by Johannes Brahms, assisted by Derek Han, himself a gifted student of Gina Bachaer and Lili Kraus. Recorded 5-8 June 2007 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, the sonatas enjoy a warm ambiance and rich, vocal sonority, courtesy of engineer Judith Sherman. The Allegro amabile of the A Major Sonata proceeds with a seamless logic, lofty in conception but not dragging, as Gidon Kremer realized this music a generation ago. Genial and plastic, the music of the Andante alternates lyric and rustic figures, often achieving a dreamlike lilt of heartfelt nostalgia. Long-breathed spaces fill the middle section prior to the pizzicato scherzino that gallops in dashing colors. The arioso (or parlando) section soars tenderly in its third incarnation, the music then hustling off into the mist. A lovely G string tone pens the last movement of the A Major, the mood redolent of the E Minor Symphony. Han’s sweeping arpeggios achieve a fluid, bravura character, and we note the little non-harmonic touches he adds throughout the entire work.
Fevered, steely, impulsively intense, the D Minor Sonata reveals a more ardent Brahms, the metrics often at odds with the pulsation of the rhythm. Huge pedals create a dynamic tension that adds pathos and unresolved aspirations to the longings of this passionate work. The D Major Adagio carries clouds of melancholy, followed by a flirtatious presto that hardly prepares for the Wagnerian depths of the Presto agitato, which Macomber and Han take breathlessly but with molded fury. The second subject Han states as a dirge like melody that Macomber’s violin takes up and expands to a kind of dervish-dance. The final ritornello of the main theme proves torrential, unapologetically tragic, a kind of Brahmsian “je regret rien” that Piaf might have sung with hardly a tear.
The G Major Sonata still remains the most expressive of the three sonatas, its rainy-day allusions notwithstanding. Macomber takes a long line in the opening movement, studied and somberly etched. Han has his own moments of tragic melancholy over which Macomber plucks and bows delicate figures of the G Major triad. The development becomes a sad waltz that suddenly plunges into double-stopped depths of rage mixed with sirens’ songs. The four-note motif at the end of the period casts the fateful shadow of Beethoven’s C Minor Symphony. The recap might have been taken a bit more slowly, but lovely it is. Pensive beauties suffuse the Adagio, introspection in a salon mode that will graciously lead to the G Minor “Regenlied” ethos of the sonata, the intimations of mortality colored by E-flat and G Major retrospections of cherished errors and romantic dalliance. All tastefully accomplished by two musically kindred spirits. Bravo.
— Gary Lemco
