Astral's Saeka Matsuyama violin recital

There are many ways to listen to music. For many people, a Brahms sonata is primarily a formal, aesthetically satisfying sonic structure. For me, the big moments in Brahms are the passages that evoke a uniquely Brahmsian mood— a moving combination of contentment and poignancy.

It's the kind of music you'd write if you were comfortable and prosperous, at ease in a warm room, amply fed, surrounded by friends, and aware, at the same time, that everything, including you, must come to an end. Life is both sweet and finite, and its sweetness intensifies the pathos inherent in its finitude.

Saeka Matsuyama captured that feeling to the complete satisfaction of this particular Brahms devotee when she played the Brahms Second Violin Sonata at her Astral recital debut. But she followed it with something even more impressive: She moved from Brahms to the entirely different aesthetic world that Bach created in his unaccompanied sonatas.

In Matsuyama's version of the second movement fugue in Bach's Second Violin Sonata, you could hear the same dance and bounce you hear in Bach's Fourth Brandenburg concerto. In the third movement andante, she produced an almost perfect job with one of the trickiest aspects of Bach's solo sonatas.

The Bach sonatas are contrapuntal works in which two voices play against each other— a requirement that seems to violate the basic nature of the violin. In the wrong hands, the andante can sound like a melody interrupted by a series of unrelated bass notes. Matsuyama created the effect you're supposed to hear— a melody that advances like a stately, flowing dance over the steady, insistent drumbeat of the bass line. The violinist essentially becomes her own accompanist.

Matsuyama preceded the Brahms with a modern work, Witold Lutoslawski's 1994 Subito, and followed the Bach with the Saint-Saens 1865 Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano. In each case, she assumed the style of a different time and the voice of a different composer with the skill of a talented actor shifting through a series of costume changes and radically different characters.

The Saint-Saens made an especially enjoyable finish because it's a true duet. The composer bestowed his best efforts on both musicians, and the afternoon ended with an engaging dialogue between one of Philadelphia's best pianists, Charles Abramovic, and an equally gifted newcomer.