Notes from the 2026 Salzburg Festival ( 3 ) Sol Gabetta & Kristian Bezuidenhout

Salzburg Festival • Soloists Concert • Sol Gabetta & Kristian Bezuidenhout

Also published in Die Presse: Salzburg: Sol Gabetta kredenzt hübsche Violoncello-Zuckerl

Brahms / Mendelssohn Cello Sonatas ♥ Starker/Sebők ♥ Mercury, 1996 US | UK | DE

Gabetta and Bezuidenhout: Well-behaved German Romanticism

Pretty Cello Bonbons and a Trio for Piano, Cello and Hearing Aid

Tuesday at the Mozarteum she was still part of Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s quintet, on Wednesday she was back as the headliner: Sol Gabetta – with fortepianist extraordinaire Kristian Bezuidenhout, in the Haus für Mozart. Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, sonatas by Brahms (No. 1) and Mendelssohn (No. 2), garnished with arrangements for cello and piano of various smaller melodic confections. The two concerts could scarcely have been more different. Gabetta fits in beautifully when Kopatchinskaja sets the agenda – wild, unruly, tussled. When the Argentine star is in charge herself, different principles apply. Here she plays with lyrical assurance, always nice-sounding, dutifully beautiful to the point of cooing. In the golden depths of her cello, she is tonally at home; as the register rises, the tone seems to lose color. Somehow Bezuidenhout went along with all of this and appeared to recede into the background.

This exquisite music-making – take Gabetta’s honeyed sweetness in the slow Allegro non troppo of the Brahms Sonata, and Bezuidenhout's sparkling-delicate accompaniment – is all a pleasure and music-making at the highest level. Objectively there is nothing to fault in the trim attack with which Gabetta draws her notes from the cello. Nor in her intonation or phrasing. And yet… Perhaps it was the vast acoustic of the Haus für Mozart itself, which resists the intimacy her playing needs – swallowing any and all of the energy that didn’t come directly from the chosen tempos. Fast tempos, however, had to wait until the concluding Mendelssohn Sonata. For everything before it – entirely in keeping with Johannes “ma non troppo” Brahms’s own prescription – was awfully tasteful and measured.

And yes: as if something had been building up, the Mendelssohn was, if not exactly exuberant, at least somewhat uberant. The applause after the first movement felt natural, necessary, and was considerably more welcome than awkward embarrassed coughing would have been. Then, at the close, a rogue hearing aid joined the ensemble persistently – at times louder than the cello. Gabetta was not notably displeased. Friction arrived at last. She threw herself into the notes with good deal of bite and fury: The best three minutes of the evening.

Sol Gabetta (Cello), Kristian Bezuidenhout (Piano) © SF/Marco Borrelli

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