MUSIC REVIEWS : MA AND AX IN MUSIC CENTER RECITAL

For the cynic, the specter of the musical public’s good taste may be the most harrowing aspect of the current concert parity of the cello with the piano and violin. Our heroes of the flute, for example, still program endless transcriptions, pops pieces and dressed-up encore numbers.

Yo-Yo Ma, on the other hand, just won a Grammy with Elgar’s Cello Concerto. And Ma and his regular pianistic partner, Emanuel Ax, collected another of those tokens of public prominence and commercial viability with Brahms’ Sonatas.

These and other equally serious efforts have earned the duo the kind of following more common to opera divas. Neither bad weather nor the attendant bad colds could stay these fans from an appointment at the Music Center with good music Monday night.

Unfortunately. The cries of the bronchially afflicted, calling to one another across the Pavilion reaches, punctured a program of Beethoven sonatas at every point. By the end of the evening, the social pressure to conform and cough was nearly unbearable.

For anyone with a sore throat and a desire to communicate that sad state, the interpretations of Ma and Ax must have seemed an irresistible challenge. Their Beethoven, regardless of period, was a thing of gruff explosions, dying pianissimos and Affekt -laden pauses.

Ma tried to stare down the hacking before each sonata, to no avail. His bow was suddenly frozen in its solemn descent to the strings at the beginning of the Sonata in C by a resurgent outburst, and every moment of poignant stillness was a signal for a chorus of throat-clearing.

Still, they tried. The Sonatas in G minor, C, and A are all formally unusual, and Ma and Ax regard the slow movements and introductions as the expressive pivots of these works. All phrases there taper soulfully, and any rest is an occasion for quiet communion.

In contrast, the quick movements sounded almost brusque. The pauses in the finale of the Sonata in C can be even more effective than the silences of the slow sections, but Ma and Ax rushed over them in an excess of energy.

In matters of phrasing and articulation, like the perfect synchronization of Ma’s up-bow spiccato and Ax’s staccato scales, the duo communicates beautifully. Dynamic balances, however, favored Ax throughout.

Sustained applause brought Ma and Ax back to play, in encore, the third and fourth movements of Rachmaninoff’s G-minor Sonata, the kind of emotionally and technically showy pieces that can quiet a large audience. If the level of profundity was lower, the level of duo playing remained on a rarified plane.