The New York Times-20080129-Rediscovering the Vienna Avant-Garde of a Century Ago- -Review-

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Rediscovering the Vienna Avant-Garde of a Century Ago; [Review]

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For some listeners the music of the Second Viennese School is by now -- a century on -- so thoroughly entrenched as to be standard repertory; for others it was supplanted by other styles so long ago that it's irrelevant. But if you're still trying to figure out what you think about it, the best idea may be to seek out a performance with James Levine at the helm. Mr. Levine is a true believer, but where other true believers approach this music with earnest reverence, he makes it sing.

Leading the Met Chamber Ensemble on Sunday afternoon at Zankel Hall, Mr. Levine performed seemingly equal measures of music by Schoenberg and his star pupils, Webern and Berg: two works each. The reality was significantly less democratic, given that Webern and Berg were represented by short but substantial works before the intermission, and Schoenberg had the whole second half, with Mr. Levine's warm-toned and endearingly flighty account of the Six Little Piano Pieces (Op. 19) as prelude to the monumental Pierrot Lunaire, with Anja Silja as the soprano soloist.

Ms. Silja, in fine voice, moved easily through the sometimes craggy vocal landscape of these 21 songs. This music demands long experience: young singers often seem so intent on precise renderings of the work's spiky intervals that they forget to focus on the eerie imagery of the texts and Schoenberg's evocative musical response to them.

Ms. Silja had no problems with precision or power, but what made her reading exceptional was the humanizing nuance and flexibility she brought to movements like Valse de Chopin, Der Kranke Mond, Gebet an Pierrot and Galgenlied.

Berg benefited from a touch of star power as well. The pianist Yefim Bronfman and the violinist Gil Shaham were the soloists in a vigorous performance of the Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin With 13 Wind Instruments. The layout of the solo lines makes this work an oddity as double concertos go: the pianist has the spotlight in the first movement and cedes it to the violinist in the second, with only the finale as a sparring ground for the two together.

Both players gave the music a strong profile and a warm glow, and the ensemble playing was as lively as you could want, with rising piccolo bursts, cheerful exchanges between the violin and various trilling or singing woodwind instruments, and a rich horn chorale providing a greater quotient of magic than this work typically yields.

The ensemble also gave a sparkling, clean-textured reading of Webern's Concerto for Nine Instruments (Op. 24). Mr. Levine, at the piano, accompanied David Chan in an appealingly glassy performance of Webern's Four Pieces for Violin and Piano (Op. 7) and supported Anthony McGill's shapely playing in Berg's Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano (Op. 5).

James Levine leads the next Met Chamber Ensemble concert on March 30 at Zankel Hall; (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org.