Given what Weilerstein has accomplished at age 26, I'm sure no one expected a raw ball of nerves to take the stage. But even knowing the back story did not fully prepare one for the poised and mature artistry of this highly gifted young cellist. From the opening work, Beethoven's Cello Sonata No. 5 (Op. 102, No. 2) played with pianist Inon Barnatan, she demonstrated not only a remarkably well-honed technical vocabulary, but also something far less common: an expressive depth and fervor that made it clear she had something important to say.
Her tone in the Beethoven was smooth, full, and graceful, and she enjoyed an easy and fluid rapport with Barnatan. But it was in Kodaly's rugged solo sonata, a work that is - or should be - her calling card, that Weilerstein truly came into her own. Sitting alone onstage, cocooned in her sound, she delivered a rapt and soulful performance of this extraordinary work. Like the Bach cello suites, Kodaly's sonata uses the resources of a single instrument to conjure a complete world, in this case suffused with the harmonic, rhythmic, and expressive essence of Hungarian folk music. Weilerstein's earthy playing, rigorous yet free, brought these folk elements to the fore, and with striking clarity in the upper registers and a deep molten tone in the cello's lowest, subterranean reaches. The energy in her playing was unflagging; the stopped chords at the end of the first movement were fired off like pistol shots.
