It was quite the evening last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.  Washington Performing Arts presented its first concert there since before the pandemic began in 2020, and did so on a high note with the superstar trio of Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma.  The hall was full, and everyone rose spontaneously as the artists opened the concert with the Ukrainian national anthem.  (Few if any of us knew at the time what Ma had been doing that afternoon – playing on Wisconsin Avenue outside the Russian Embassy to protest the invasion.

The playing was of course on the highest level.  Ax, in particular, with his bejeweled runs and scrupulous weighting of every chord, framed his two more flamboyant colleagues with poise and wisdom.  The two string players were more like free agents, not always in sync on their bowings or even, in a few spots, their intonation.  But the frisson and imagination throughout the evening almost made up for the disappointing programming.  For some reason, the threesome has started to play and record arrangements of Beethoven symphonies.  Why, I couldn’t tell you.  Yes, Beethoven himself arranged one of them for this medium, but that was simply a nod to mass-marketing; centuries ago, the principal way music was consumed was through small ensemble or 4-hand piano arrangements which people played at home.  But the effort expended on last night’s Pastoral Symphony arrangement by Shai Wosner made starkly clear why this was a bad idea.  The Pastoral in particular, with its many, many solos for different instruments, was a poor choice; drained of color and seeming at times to just drift along, notwithstanding the often impassioned playing.  

But this still begs the question of “why”?  Those of us familiar with the trio repertoire would literally salivate at the prospect of hearing these three virtuosos tackle the most challenging works; the Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Dvorak F minor, or Schubert Bb trios.  Sadly, I fear the reason we won’t is that these guys simply don’t have the inclination to spend the necessary rehearsal time (an all-Beethoven program like last night’s, which also included the Op. 11 clarinet trio and the Op. 70 “Ghost” trio, could be and likely was prepared in one afternoon).  

But let’s be grateful for what we had; an appearance by three of the most highly-sought-after artists in the world (program repeated tonight in Carnegie Hall and tomorrow in Boston’s Symphony Hall), a full house, the pandemic trending downward, and a feeling that music will always come back and carry us through.