Washington Classical Review

Violist Tabea Zimmermann performed with pianist Javier Perianes Friday night at the Library of Congress. Photo: C. Downey

Tabea Zimmermann last visited the Library of Congress in 2010, touring North America with the Arcanto Quartet, which sadly disbanded in 2016. The German violist returned Friday evening in a duo program with Spanish pianist Javier Perianes, providing a long overdue chance to assess the molten power and formal subtlety of both of these noteworthy musicians. (Perianes will also play Schumann’s Piano Concerto later this month with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.)

In this program of repertoire from the 19th and 20th centuries, Zimmermann drew forth an exceptionally robust tone from her custom-made instrument by Patrick Robin, often preferring an almost vibrato-free sound that seared with its near-perfect intonation.

The pair opened with Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, the Op. 73 set originally for clarinet and piano, arranged for viola by Zimmermann and Hartmut Höll. The slow tempo of the first movement offered the chance to savor the violist’s chocolate-rich sound, supported in a sensitive rubato freedom by Perianes, who intertwined his right hand’s melodic ideas with that of his partner.

At times in the moderately paced second movement, the arrangement tested the capacity of the viola. By contrast, the harried third movement, played with often crushing force by both musicians, proved a stormy romantic tour de force. Both players patiently brought out Schumann’s allusions to the melodic material of the first two movements as it appeared under new guises.

The Schumann work paired ideally with Brahms’ Viola Sonata No. 2, also originally for clarinet and the composer’s final piece of chamber music. The brawny sound of Zimmermann’s C string set a decidedly autumnal tone for the piece, turning delicate and nostalgic in the first movement’s secondary theme. Waves of sound marshaled from both instruments gave the development section a turbulent character.

Perianes used his large volume potential at the Steinway to dramatic effect in the second movement, a roiling Scherzo. In the contrasting Trio, he produced solemn, chorale-like textures, matched by Zimmerman’s grave double-stops leading to the return of the opening music. Both musicians brought out a delectable delicacy in the concluding variations of the third movement, punctuated by explosive outbursts.

Zimmermann is known for her devotion to more recent music, which featured ingeniously in the second half. Britten’s Lachrymae, composed for the Scottish violist William Primrose, is a nod backward to the music of John Dowland, namely his lute song “If my complaints could passions move.”

Although snippets of the Dowland tune appear in the first section of the piece, it is woven into a cryptic, almost atonal harmonic fabric. The piece became more melodic as the two musicians moved through it, always playing this often abstruse music with an ear for musicality. References to Shostakovich, whose music and friendship Britten held dear, cropped up in the middle sections of the piece, starting with a bold octave theme from the piano. When the Dowland tune first appeared solidly, in the sixth variation, it trailed off notably in the DSCH name motif that Shostakovich used in many of his pieces.

After a surge of tension, in the final variation both musicians gradually released all the anguish built up to that point. Like a serenely chanted mantra, the Dowland melody appeared in Zimmermann’s viola, which both musicians allowed to unfold with freely applied rubato. The accumulated interpretative decisions along the way clarified Britten’s unusual aim, a variations set made in reverse, from most distant reconfiguration at the start to the unadorned theme at the end.

Britten’s allusions to Shostakovich led naturally to the final work, Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata, the last piece of music the Russian composer completed, just weeks before his death in 1975. The first movement opened with music-box elegance, the viola’s pizzicato rumination on its open string intervals and tinkly treble textures in the piano. A propulsive tempo choice added ferocity to the explosive sections as well, with shriek-like glissandi in the viola.

Both musicians gave sarcastic bite to the second movement, a scherzo drawn partly from Shostakovich’s unfinished 1942 opera The Gamblers. Perianes accented the drum-like repetitions in the piano that accompanied Zimmermann’s rustic-fiddle approach. Shostakovich, who delighted in quotations of his own and other composers’ music, focused the final movement on motifs referencing Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. The crepuscular final section died away like a metronome running down to silence.

In a final gesture that could only happen at the Library of Congress, Zimmermann took up the Library’s remarkable Antonio Stradivari viola known as the “Tuscan-Medici,” crafted in 1690, for two extraordinary encores. In both Clara Schumann’s Romance No. 1 and the final movement of Robert Schumann’s Märchenbilder, the Strad’s tone was both warmer and less potent than Zimmermann’s modern instrument, making for a striking end to a superlative concert.

Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason plays a solo recital of music by Beethoven, Ravel, and Tabakova 8 p.m. March 16. loc.gov