Boston Classical Review

Charm can be a tricky attribute to quantify. But there’s no question violinist Joshua Bell brought that quality to his recital with pianist Shai Wosner at Symphony Hall on Sunday afternoon.

Not that the duo’s Vivo Performing Arts-presented lineup of sonatas by Schubert, Grieg, Prokofiev, and Ravel needed much help: all four scores are effortlessly ingratiating and tuneful. Yet a little extra finesse doesn’t hurt.

In the case of Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 2, the approach added a welcome dimension to music that, though largely written in the composer’s 20^th-century-Classical vein, can, in some hands, still sound knotty and acerbic.

This time around, though, it was a model of freshness, clarity, and vivacity. The Presto, with its whiplash turns and droll spirit, came out with bracing vigor. Meantime, the finale’s dissonances were cleanly enunciated and, though they sounded a touch measured, the movement’s big refrains swaggered.

Throughout, Bell and Wosner evinced an excellent partnership, the pianist’s resonant, lean-textured contributions providing an ideal backdrop for the violinist’s kaleidoscopic peregrinations. Their articulations of the first movement’s rhythmic tattoos were tightly unified, as were that section’s inwardly lyrical moments. So, too, the pair’s delivery of the gorgeous Andante which, on this afternoon, sounded a shade like eerie Brahms.

Their account of Schubert’s “Grand Duo” Sonata was likewise rewarding.

The breadth of melodic ideas on display in this music is simply astounding: the 20-year-old Schubert clearly didn’t meet a tune he couldn’t turn to gold. But the real fascination of Sunday’s rendition lay in the depth of characterization Bell and Wosner teased from the sonata’s pages thanks to their close attention to phrasing and dynamics.

That latter aspect, especially, turned the first and third movements—which already have a considerable degree of built-in thematic contrast—into fully-fledged musical dramas. The same went for the Allegro vivace, which benefited from the duo’s dynamic extremes and sense of playfulness: the coda culminated in an emphatic, bravura final cadence. In the Scherzo, the spastic exuberance of its outer thirds was countered by gracefully woozy chromatic turns during the Trio.

No such lightness intrudes on Grieg’s turbulent Violin Sonata No. 3. Yet for all its grand, heaving storminess, the music never quite sheds its Scandinavian folk music undertones.

Sunday’s reading quietly highlighted those reference points—especially in the first movement—allowing them to function as touchstones in an otherwise unforgiving maelstrom. The central section’s snapping, rustic dance bristled, as did the finale’s strapping rhythms.

Across the Grieg, Bell was at his most characteristic and colorful, imbuing his playing with soaring fervency. The last movement’s high-G-string passagework was impeccably pure-toned, while he and Wosner dispatched the music’s contrapuntal dialogues with abandon.

They accomplished much the same in Ravel’s Sonata, which concluded with a torrid and absorbingly well-shaped moto perpetuo.

Though the saucy “Blues” movement was more silky than smoky, the duo navigated the excursive Allegretto with a good deal of understanding and insight. In their telling, that movement’s various parts—its cheeky pecking figures, dreamy dissonances, plays of textural contrast, and more—were all tied together through the music’s songful impetus.

Bell gave voice to the last thanks, in part, to dazzling bow control: his bow changes during the long, held, high G at the end of the first movement were virtually imperceptible. Afterwards, he and Wosner offered a final display of their beguiling artistry with an unaffected encore of the “Melodie” from Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher.

Vivo Performing Arts presents violinist Lisa Batiashvili and pianist Giorgi Gigashvili playing music by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Bardanashvili, and Franck 8 p.m. Friday at Jordan Hall. vivoperformingarts.org

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