Five of LA’s Finest Play Brahms, et al, at Mason House

l-r: Ambroise Aubrun, Martin Chalifour, Todd Mason, Cécilia Tsan, David Kaplan, Jonah Sirota,
Dr. Kristi Brown.

REVIEW

Chalifour and Friends play Mason, Kreisler, Debussy, and Brahms at Mason House

DAVID J BROWN

I’m not usually a fan of playing isolated movements from integrated works like a sonata or a symphony, where the contrasts between the often widely differing movements add up to an expressive whole greater than the sum of its parts. But if anyone has the right to sanction such a selection then it’s the composer of the piece in question, and this was the case with host Todd Mason at the February concert in this year’s season (the 12th) at his Mar Vista home, when he chose to open the program with just the Andante tranquillo first movement of his own String Quartet No. 1 (2019).

The aim was to induce, at least for this evening, a sense of calm to counter the external turmoil and discord we’re all living with, and the performance by some of LA’s finest string players (Martin Chalifour and Ambroise Aubrun, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; and Cécilia Tsan, cello) was as nuanced and responsive to the music’s ebb and flow as anyone could wish—though, a little ironically perhaps, the very acoustic clarity of Mason’s purpose-remodeled concert room revealed more clearly than would a larger space the music’s inner harmonic tensions as the instrumental lines wove together.

Fritz Kreisler.

Mason House regular Dr. Kristi Brown in her pre-concert talk made the most of the juicy back-story to the next two items on the program. After showing an early review of a concert by violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) including pieces by some 18th century composers, she segued to another later clipping in which he confessed (shock! horror!) that in fact they’d been pastiches by himself. Following the Mason quartet movement, the capacity audience was privileged to hear a couple of these from the virtuoso hands of Martin Chalifour, joined by pianist David Kaplan.

Both Tempo di Minuetto and Prélude et Allegro were originally attributed to Gaetano Pugnani (1731-1798), the former amiably stately in its outer sections, enclosing a jaunty little trio, but overall not particularly remarkable. The Prélude et Allegro was altogether more impressive, however, with its wide-leaping first half giving way to a really scorching account by Chalifour of the whirlwind, cadenza-like Allegro.

Claude Debussy, c.1910.

By late 1914 Claude Debussy was already seriously ill and, as a patriotic Frenchman and particularly a Parisian, was angered and depressed by, and personally feeling the effects of, the war with Germany. His impulse to compose had diminished severely, but was reawakened when his publisher encouraged him to embark on a set of sonatas, each for a different combination of instruments. The first half’s final item was thus the first of these, Debussy’s Cello Sonata L.144, with Tsan replacing Chalifour up front, and Kaplan remaining at the piano.

In some hands these late chamber works of Debussy can feel a bit like disjointed fragments from a sensibility so refined it can barely be articulated, but this performance was anything but reticent. As played by Kaplan—and joined by Tsan from the fourth measure—the first movement’s slow start, tellingly marked Sostenuto e molto risoluto, felt like a portentous opening onto the new expressive world where this sonata and the two following would unfold, as well as the never-to-be-realized plan for the three more that Debussy’s death in 1918 at only 55 would cancel.

The Cello Sonata’s three movements cover a remarkable range of dynamic, pace, timbre, and style of instrumental attack across their total duration of under 12 minutes, and Kaplan and Tsan, faithfully following as many of Debussy’s myriad expressive markings as seemed humanly possible, delivered a performance of visceral impact and intensity.

Brahms in 1866. 

The single big piece after the interval was arguably the one amongst Brahms’s chamber works that went through the most reworking before it reached its final form, and—pretty inarguably—is the most dramatic of them all. Privy to its evolution, Clara Schumann is said to have suggested that the work which eventually reached its final form in 1864 as the Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 could equally be for orchestra (indeed the English composer Robin Holloway has very successfully orchestrated it as “Symphony in F minor”), and Chalifour and friends duly treated the Mason House audience to a performance which combined visceral impact in the great unison passages and sensitive interplay, as at the violinists’ duetting in the opening movement’s second subject group.

With the overall duration at a very trim 38 minutes or so (not entirely due to the omission of the first movement exposition repeat, which gave that movement even more of an arrow-like momentum than usual), the arrival of Brahms’ astonishing concluding cadence to the finale, like a lead-weighted drop-curtain plunging down, had the proper effect of a stunned silence before the applause erupted. Yet another memorable evening at Mason House, enhanced as ever by Ethel Phipps' wonderful catering, and three concerts still to come in this season—may there be many more!

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Mason Home Concert, 3484 Redwood Ave., Mar Vista, CA 90066, 6:00 p.m., Saturday, February 21, 2026.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason; Kreisler, Debussy, Brahms: Wikimedia Commons.

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