Cellist romances audience

ORONO – Alisa Weilerstein plays the cello the way Itzhak Perlman plays the violin.

Alisa Weilerstein plays the cello the way Joan Sutherland sings.

Both of those sentences are intended to convey excellence but an excellence qualified by the presence of a distinctive, mannered style. In a well-attended concert at the Minsky Recital Hall at the Maine Center for the Arts, the young cellist, along with pianist David Laughton, performed a program heavily weighted toward the full-blown Romanticism of composers Johannes Brahms and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Although shorter pieces by Frederic Chopin and contemporary British composer David Heath were included, their presence did little to tip the scales toward a balanced program.

The emotional intensity of the evening’s performance was established within the first few seconds of the “Sonata No. 2 in F Minor” by Brahms.

The auditory and emotional effect was like being abruptly hurled from a cannon or being tossed into the deep end of the pool without first learning to swim. It took several minutes for some in the audience to build our receptivity to the point where we could appreciate this florid and dramatic music. Perhaps a less bombastic piece, such as the Chopin Polonaise, could have served as a kind of musical introduction, had it been placed first, rather than last, on the program.

During this piece and the contemporary work that followed, pianist Laughton played with brilliance and an interesting and interpretive approach to the music. His volume, though, was a bit much for the resonant acoustics of Minsky hall, and, at times, it seemed as if it were a piano sonata, or at the very least, a duo sonata, instead of one written for the cello.

“On Fire” by David Heath is an interesting composition combining reverberating chords and dissonances with a kind of modal piano drone, rather like a bagpipe, against which harmonics and ragalike melodies were placed. The piece may or may not become a standard of the repertoire in the future, but it did sustain interest from its crashing opening to its gentle close.

During the intermission, the piano lid was lowered to a short-stick position, and this did much to improve the comparative dynamics between cello and piano. The Rachmaninoff “Sonata for Piano and Cello in G minor, Op. 19” is another weighty romantic piece, filled with beautiful melodies, which Weilerstein played with an emphasis on emotion. Her playing style favors a bold attack and a heavy fervid vibrato, which worked well during the faster passages, but perhaps seemed too stolid for the more lyrical portions of this piece.

The final selection for the evening was the “Polonaise Brilliante Op. 3” of Chopin. While pianist Laughton played with delicate finesse, the cello work here seemed lacking. A lighter, more precise approach might have worked more effectively here, but Weilerstein played the Chopin with nearly as much Sturm und Drang as the earlier pieces.

Alisa Weilerstein is a young artist with a mature and distinctive style.

For those who like their music on the emotional side of Romantic, her CD “Works for Cello and Piano” is available for further listening on The EMI Classics Debut series.