Sabine Meyer

Wigmore Hall, London *****

Tim Ashley
Guardian

Friday May 4, 2001

The German clarinettist Sabine Meyer is a formidable figure; an air of solemnity hovers round her. Making her long-awaited Wigmore Hall debut with the pianist Lars Vogt, she walked onto the platform wearing a sombre black dress with a stiff white collar. She looked, I thought at first, rather rigid. However, the severity of her appearance forms a sharp contrast with her playing, which is characterised by a sinuosity of line, matchless beauty of tone, and a subtle yet passionate expressiveness. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest instrumentalists of our time, and her reputation is entirely justified.

Berg and Brahms formed her programme, which focused primarily on the latter's two Clarinet Sonatas: late, dense, epoch-making works. Taken together, they form an essay in contrast as well as a radical exploration of classical structure. The First is expansive, almost symphonic in its sweep, passing from turbulence to florid ebullience and containing at its centre a slow movement of languid serenity.

The introverted Second is its exact opposite: classical structure is pared down to its barest essentials. An aphoristic compactness offsets a fluidly changing, almost overwhelming richness of mood and thematic development. Clarinet and piano carry equal weight in this music - there's no suggestion at any point of the pianist taking on the role of accompanist. Meyer and the equally remarkable Vogt seemed to function as an indivisible unit, each supremely alert to every flicker of meaning and mood, neither of them straying towards arid virtuosity. The audience sat through it all in awed silence.

Brahms's influence on the Second Viennese School was strong, and Berg's Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano draw, to a certain extent, on the combination of formal terseness and wide-ranging expression in Brahms's Second Sonata. There are flashes forward to the curving melodic eroticism of Lulu - blatantly, almost shockingly done by Meyer - as well as the queasy ululations of Wozzeck. Here, Meyer cleaved the air with a sequence of lacerating, expressionistic shrieks.

Vogt, left to his own devices, also played Berg's Piano Sonata, perfectly judging the balance between its vast, architectonic one-movement structure, and the wild post- Wagnerian extravagance of its sentiments.

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