Keeping Perlman On His Pedestal

If ever anyone in the classical performance world needed no introduction, it is Itzhak Perlman. Filling Avery Fisher Hall to capacity was relatively easy for him on Thursday evening, but the rap on Mr. Perlman the past few years is that success may have spoiled him, that he has lost a step and often simply phones it in. I've never experienced any slippage in his recitals, but I also had not heard him live for four seasons. It was time to check him out.

Reports of his artistic demise are greatly exaggerated. Foremost in any Perlman recital is that gigantic, vibrant tone. His sound is so resonant, so room-filling, so opulent that he could play even the worst piece of treacle and make it seem important. Still, there were some worrisome moments in this first offering, the Rondo Brilliant in B Minor of Franz Schubert, performed with longtime accompanist Rohan De Silva.

Accuracy was not always the watchword, and colorings were a bit monochromatic. Mr. Perlman was playful when the music so indicated, but there were other passages during which he appeared uninvolved. Could the rumblings of his detachment have merit?

Once he entered the Romantic repertoire, the answer was clearly no. More than fine, he was Perlman. He settled in to a gorgeous reading of the E Flat Major Violin Sonata, notable for shimmering vibrato and delicious, sensitive phrasing.

Mr. Perlman is a champion of the Three American Pieces of Lukas Foss, having recorded them on his "American Album," and he ended the regular program with a straightforward reading.

Most recitals turn to encores as lighter entertainment to send the crowd home happy, but Mr. Perlman instead invested much effort, intellectual and technical, in these concluding pieces. Salut d'amour was a sweetly intoned piece of Sir Edward Elgar, more of a standard encore offering, but Mr. Perlman also explored some deeper repertoire. Armed with a list of all the pieces he has ever played at Avery Fisher, he chose the Fantasiestuecke for Clarinet and Piano by Robert Schumann expressly because he had never presented it in concert. This was not a transcription but rather an alternative suggestion made by the composer. Mr. Perlman mentioned that he had always wanted to play these miniatures, and caught just the right spirit of childlike grace and infectious enthusiasm.

But the performance of the evening that proved his mastery was of the Siciliane in the style of Francoeur by Fritz Kreisler. This is one of those works that the Viennese violinist purported to have discovered in an obscure library and presented with "historical accuracy" (period instrument fans take note), when, in fact, he had simply written it himself. Mr. Perlman not only demonstrated exceptional technical dexterity, but performed the piece with no sense of flamboyance or self-aggrandizement. This was pure music making, designed to allow the lovely and simple tunes, not the performer, to shine. It takes a supremely confident artist to play like this. Mr. Perlman is one of that rare breed.

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Hoping to be in a similar position to Mr. Perlman 40 years on, violinist Nemanja Radulovic gave his "distinctive debut" on Friday evening at the Weill Recital Hall. Mr. Radulovic studies in Paris and was nominated for this honor by the Cite de la Musique.

He performed a program we might christen "Recital 101," a collection of pieces each of which has been realized thousands of times in both introductory professional and conservatory graduation recitals around the globe. Mr. Radulovic exhibited some nice touches, but labored under the weight of one rather significant flaw throughout the evening: Every piece on the program sounded exactly the same. Mr. Radulovic appears to have no feel for either musical history or style.

This young man, however, was born to be a violinist. He is blessed with inordinately long fingers, and his sound is large, sometimes too large for the intimate confines of Weill. He can produce a radiant tone, a combination of timbre and volume that would allow him to pursue a soloist's career if he so desired. Playing an instrument crafted by J.B. Vuillaume in 1843, he possesses the raw material for rainbow-colored music making.

But — there is always a "but", and in this case it is a big one — Mr. Radulovic and his accompanist Susan Manoff were in trouble right from the first passages, beginning with Mozart. My sympathies are hardly with the period instrument crowd, but there have to be some boundaries. The pair played the K. 301 sonata employing huge gestures, exaggerated, almost cartoonish phrasing that would have been not shocking, but simply unknown, in the 18th century. As a result, this charming little work turned into a Lisztian dialogue of heavy but empty emotional content.

While the Weill latecomers were still taking their seats, the duo elided through the opening of the G Major Sonata, Op. 30, No. 3 of Beethoven. Here we had the "look ma, how fast I can play" problem, in which the pair transposed the normally catchy opening into liquefied mush. At least they remained consistent, intoning the final Allegro vivace at Mach 5. There is a trend now to perform Beethoven quickly, but this realization seemed to be designed simply to get him out of the way as speedily as possible.

Since every offering was shaped in the same manner, Mr. Radulovic's traversal of the Devil's Trill Sonata of Giuseppe Tartini was actually quite good. When the material is this type of fluff, designed for showcasing a performer's dexterity, then why not impose upon it a circuslike overlay of tawdriness? Here, even this violinist's maddening habit of stomping his foot like a carnival horse didn't interfere with the musical flow severely.

Ms. Manoff, with the exception of sharing Mr. Radulovic's stylistic peccadillos, did not do too badly in the first half of the program, but came a cropper in the Franck A Major Sonata after intermission. This was especially unlucky as he was sailing along rather nicely in this hyperemotional essay, with the caveat that it was intoned at exactly the same volume — loud — as the first three numbers of the night.

Mr. Radulovic ended with the Tzigane of Maurice Ravel, but made a misstep at the outset and played the entire lower register part of his extended opening solo out of tune. Technically, Ravel's double stops and left hand pizzicato were a bit of a reach for him, but he soldiered on bravely. The bigger concern was that the piece, designed to evoke the exotic, just sounded like Mozart, at least the Mozart of this particular evening.