The fingers move across the keyboard like cavalry. Presto agitato. One after the other, left to right, then again left to right of the keyboard. The tempo is moto perpetuo. The fingertips press each key for an instant — not too much pressure but the impact is relentless. The muscles of the hand follow a pattern; they submit to a memory that’s been imprinted on the cerebellum after years of deliberate practice.
Seated at the piano, the man is looking but not looking, his mind in a liminal space faraway but also here on stage. He’s in a state of flow. The hands, the tendons, the dexterity are those of a young man.
The young man is a 75-year-old master, playing the third movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 27.
This past Saturday, world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax and clarinetist Anthony McGill performed at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City. The eighth and final performance on this tour, the concert included classical pieces by Schumann, Schubert and Beethoven, as well as more contemporary ones by Bernstein, Jessie Montgomery and James Lee III.
Both Ax and McGill interacted with the audience throughout the evening, which made the concert an intimate experience. The sense of camaraderie and friendship between the two was evident. Laughing, teasing each other, they were enjoying themselves. Their friendship goes back almost 20 years. After being introduced to one another thanks to a common friend, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
“I played a trio with Mitsuko Ushida and Yo-Yo around the time of President Obama’s inauguration,” said McGill a day before the performance, during a talk moderated by Benjamin Coelho at the Voxman Music Building. “It was Yo-Yo who introduced me to Manny.”
McGill is the principal clarinetist at the New York Philharmonic and has played with the New York Metropolitan Opera, a place that Ax is fond of and frequents with his family. “I get these wonderful emails from Manny,” McGill said. “He’s the person who will notice the clarinet in the middle of the opera, and then write me an email the next day.”
One of the highlights of the recital was Jessie Montgomery’s “Peace,” which was commissioned by violinist Elena Urioste and her partner, the pianist Tom Poster. During the pandemic, the couple conceived a project called #UriPosteJukeBox in which every 88 days they would make a live video playing a duet.
McGill listened to it online during the pandemic, and was enthralled by the reflective quality of its melody. He reached out to Montgomery, who is the 2024-2025 Hancher composer-in-residence (and who has some more engagements this year). “I contacted her and asked if I could play it, and she made the arrangements for clarinet.”
The duet performed Schubert’s sonata in A Minor, D. 821, which was originally composed for the arpeggione, an instrument resembling a cello but with six strings and frets. One of the challenges when adapting the piece for a wind instrument is that the player, as opposed to a string instrument, must breathe at some point while playing. The second movement, Adagio in E Major, made me think of passages from Astor Piazzolla’s “Concierto Para Quinteto,” which has an astounding solo for clarinet. Perhaps Piazzolla used to listen to Schubert on an old vinyl record in Buenos Aires.
After playing Leonard Bernstein’s sonata for clarinet and piano, which was Bernstein’s first published work, the duet performed an encore. It was a melody from the song “Goin’ Home,” which is based on Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” specifically the Largo movement. In the summer of 1893, Dvorak lived for a short period in Spillville, Iowa, and was mesmerized by Spirituals.
“It’s getting late,” joked McGill. “We’re playing ‘Goin’ Home’ so you can go home. Thank you for coming.”
