Concert at MCA intense and fun Violinist, pianist use interpretive sorcery

Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, who performed energetically together Friday at the Maine Center for the Arts, are musicians who force you to take a stand about their performances. To their well-trained talents, they add interpretive sorcery. They grimace and lurch with phrasing to such an athletic degree that they could easily be thought of as channelers or mediums possessed by composers and their music. It is a fitful, fascinating style that can leave audiences breathlessly happy.

Yet for some, it is all style. Salerno-Sonnenberg, particularly, has been held to an unusual standard by critics who complain that she brings physical rather than aesthetic combustion to the stage. If she were a rock star, she would be forgiven, if not encouraged.

But it’s not just that. In the classical music world, she has also been controversial for her emotional ostentation and lack of range. She is high and low, bold and brazen, but not much in between, some argue. They want to know: Where’s the substance? Is it right to allow personality to overshadow music?

These tough assessments come, by and large, from critics and musicians. To the popular audience, classical performers such as Salerno-Sonnenberg and McDermott, a nicely paired duo, bring an invigorating and exciting charm to scores.

On Friday, they offered rich and appreciated interpretations of Schubert’s Rondo Brilliant in B Minor, Faure’s Sonata in A Major, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 7 in C Minor. The readings were tenderly delicate and, at times, pounding and big. Both Salerno-Sonnenberg and McDermott used their instruments abundantly and with unsuppressed devotion to the score. Salerno-Sonnenberg with the violin resembled a confident fencer thrusting her musical epee toward the notes. For her own part, McDermott defied the seatedness of the piano. She nearly rose with the music. Sometimes, the two women’s musical motions were as rhythmically coordinated as the notes, and they were like a great river flowing fearlessly toward the open waters.

For some, the evening was a treasure precisely because these two women show such conviction and determination, as well as talent and original judgment, with their art. They could be playing contemporary pieces that perhaps better accommodate their styles. Instead, they drop a certain unabashed nowness into older works and gallop ahead.

Of course, it is also true that there was fuel for both sides of the quality versus charisma argument in Saturday’s performance.

Indeed, you have to take your own stand.

But it’s unlikely that anyone left the concert hall truly disappointed – especially after a sparkling encore of Midnight Bells and Heifitz’s scoring of Gershwin’s NAME IT.

This was a classical concert that was intense, unorthodox and, in a word, fun. There’s nothing that annoys critics – and pleases audiences – more.