Gutman's genius shines through

January 25, 2006|Richard Dyer, Globe Staff

CAMBRIDGE -- The eminent cellist Natalia Gutman made her American debut in 1969, but soon afterward ran afoul of Soviet bureaucracy and was not allowed to leave Russia for nine years. In 1986 she finally returned to the United States, and she has regularly played in this country since -- although apparently never in Boston.

Sunday night she presented a chamber music program in Sanders Theatre to a substantial and enthusiastic audience. Gutman began her career with the patronage of some of the great senior figures of her youth, including the legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter. On Sunday she, in turn, came with younger musicians: the violinist Slava Moroz and pianist Dmitri Shteinberg.

Gutman is now in her early 60s; it is painful to think that she was an almost-exact contemporary of the cellist Jacqueline du Pre, who was silenced too early by disease. Gutman is a musician and instrumentalist of genius. That is the only word for her playing of Schumann's ''Five Pieces in Folk Style"; there is no way anyone could imagine playing of this individuality, vitality, earthiness, and imagination without hearing it. She also played Brahms's First Sonata for cello with remarkable presence, insight, and subtlety, although she was not much helped by Shteinberg's monochromatic, straight-ahead collaborative playing. The pianist remained monochromatic, but the strength of his technique and the vitality of his rhythm were admirable.

A first-rate violinist, Moroz joined Gutman and Shteinberg for the D-Minor Trio by Anton Arensky. Two snapped violin strings caused only a temporary halt. The ensemble also played a harrowingly intense performance of Shostakovich's Second Trio (1944), which opened with some uncanny work by Gutman, playing in the highest register of the cello, higher than the violin. The performance was followed by floral deliveries and the kind of unison applause you hear in Russia, so the trio obliged by offering a repeat of the insouciant scherzo of the Arensky.