Carter Brey and Christopher O’Riley

Carter Brey – cello
Christopher O’Riley – piano

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
Sonata for cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 65

It was a long afternoon at the opera (Lulu, at the Met), but my mother, who is well into her eighties, and who had survived the four hours of the opera, had tickets for chamber music in Westchester that evening. Unless there were a hurricane or a broken bone, she would insist on going, and did. I went too. It was well worth it.

Brey and O’Riley make a nice duo. They are both middle-aged guys and appear to have a warm relationship – it comes through in the music.

They played a somewhat non-standard cello-piano evening of Strauss, Poulenc and Chopin. Brey (who has been the principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic since 1996) has a fabulous technique which displayed itself exceedingly vividly in the Poulenc. It’s a pleasure to watch his fingers and his bow dance and he appears to do it with considerable insouciance as though it all just flew off his hands.

Strauss composed his competent cello sonata when he was only eighteen. During intermission, I marveled about that to a friend until I was reminded that Mozart was an old hand at that age. Even so, it is an accomplished piece for one so young. I didn’t find it vividly moving, but sat back in admiration at Strauss’ capacities and Brey’s and O’Riley’s professional execution.

The Poulenc is an evolution of French late Romanticism as it moved beyond Debussy and Ravel into Modernism. There’s a lightness and playfulness that abounds through its varied landscapes, and Brey and O’Riley beautifully conveyed that interwoven combination of romp and atmospheric absorption.

The Chopin sonata has a grandiosity to it, more like the piano concertos and much less like the episodic pieces – the Ballades, the Preludes, the Nocturnes and the Impromptus. There is a structured boldness to this piece – Chopin’s last major work, which he apparently wrestled with and rewrote considerably – that fits more into the model of MAJOR ROMANTIC WORK rather than into those less monumental episodic pieces into which Chopin poured incredible charm. There is poignancy in this realization that this great composer, faced with the end, attempted a kind of musical heroism that did not suit him as well as the mode of impressionistic improvisation did. Oh well. Brey and O’Riley carried it off beautifully, however. Again, there was more appreciation rather than evocation involved, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

It struck me that O’Riley is a musician who sits into his music with a wonderful absorption and depth of determination. Brey, as I read in the program, is an avid sailor, and somehow his playing – wonderfully taut and capable – reminded me of the sparkling of sunlight on waves – satisfying in its fluency, crisp, and reflecting an ebullient play of light on the surface. Perhaps this complementary set of energies between O’Riley and Brey explains why they make a nice duo and give the sense of being good compadres.

– BADMan

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