Brahms chamber music seems to be breaking out unnervingly in threes this season. First it was the three string quartets on a single program (the Emerson Quartet, in October). Coming up in February are the three piano trios (Nicholas Angelich and the brothers Capuçon, courtesy of San Francisco Performances). And Monday evening at the San Francisco Conservatory's Recital Hall, it was the three violin sonatas, with violinist Axel Strauss and pianist Paul Hersh — a program to be reprised in April (San Francisco Performances again) by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lambert Orkis. Overkill?
Well, yes and no. Despite the undoubted tastiness factor in collecting so much Brahms in one place, the trios and the quartets don't really make satisfactory single-concert programs. As packages, they're too long (more than 90 minutes each) and too unrelievedly intense. It's not only the players who are going to be exhausted, mentally as well as physically, by the end. The sonatas, though, represent maybe 75 minutes' worth of music altogether (80 if you throw in the C-Minor Scherzo that Brahms wrote for a collaborative sonata dedicated to the violinist Joseph Joachim, the composer's only other original work for violin and piano).
Moreover, they're conveniently in a sensible performing order already — longest first, shortest and most dramatic last — and they're various and ingratiating enough not to wear out their welcome even when all in a row. Monday's recital, counting intermission, was an hour and 40 minutes of concentrated Brahmsian bliss.
I've said it more than once before, but it bears repeating until the larger Bay Area concertgoing public takes notice: Some of the best solo and chamber playing to be heard anywhere in this area is happening at the Conservatory. Strauss, in particular, seems to me the equal of any violinist we have around here.
On Monday, as ever, the chief glory was his clear, golden sound, airy and yet substantial, with a mobile, fastish vibrato that reminds me of Arthur Grumiaux or Christian Ferras. Given a long lyrical span over which to spread itself, like the first movement of the G-Major Sonata or the last of the A-Major, his lyricism is irresistible, effortless. Concentrated down, with a slower bow, as in the sonatas' three slow movements, it achieves richness and density that still seem utterly free of strain.
Where Brahms adopts his skittish scherzando mode, as in the third movement of the D-Minor Sonata or the fast bits of the central movement of the A-Major, Strauss' articulation is agile, varied, responsive. Where Brahms cuts loose, as in the last movement of the D-Minor or in the freestanding C-Minor Scherzo, he's ferocious.