CATCHING UP II: AX AND STOLTZMAN

Friday, 12/16: We went to a nice concert at the Metropolitan Museum by Emanuel Ax and Richard Stoltzman, playing the piano and clarinet respectively. Debussy, Brahms, Bernstein, Beaser and Foss were the composers--the last two present in the audience.

The clarinet is not my favorite instrument. It usually has a very shrill, unpleasant sound to my ears. Only the most skilled players can make it sound good to me, but Stoltzman is one of the best I've ever heard. He was always in total control of his instrument, which was really necessary in Debussy's Première Rhapsodie, which was used as an examination piece for aspiring clarinetists.

Stoltzman preceded some of the pieces with short remarks, usually humorous. After one, Ax whispered something to him causing him to laugh uncontrollably. They were having fun, and the audience was, too. They both played wonderfully.

Ax was looking good--I think he's lost some weight recently. Stoltzman always presents a very slight figure--I think he must get his clothes in the boys' department. His boyishness is heighted by his haircut--sort of the old Beatles' cut--except Stolzman's hair is gray. It really looks silly.

I had never heard of Robert Beaser, but his pieces were quite good. The last of the four they played, "Ground 0," was the single somber one. This was Beaser's reaction to 9/11, and ended with Stoltzman slowly walking off to the rear of the stage as he played the final bars. Octagenarian Lukas Foss' "Three American Pieces," some sixty years old, ended the program. Stoltzman thanked Foss for allowing them to perform them, since he was sure Foss would have preferred them to play something he had written the previous week.

A Gershwin piece was the encore. They brought Beaser and Foss up to the stage to join them in receiving the audience's appreciation.

The only thing that marred the evening was the couple behind us. She wore a jangling bracelet she could not keep still and refused to remove, and they brought along their grandson, who sniffled throughout the first half of the concert. And there was a guy a few rows back who should have been in bed with his cough.