Two Chamber Concerts, One Sparkling, One Depressing

NEW YORK — Europe is dotted with small museums devoted to the early lives of cultural icons. Step inside any of them and you are invited to gaze at vitrines containing humble objects once touched by the future luminary. You do your best to extract meaning from the odd inkwell or hairbrush, but too often the banality of the material defeats you.

I felt similarly despondent Tuesday at Alice Tully Hall, during much of the season-opening concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Called “Russian Inspiration,” it was sold as a teaser for the society’s Russian-theme festival in March. But save for an eight-minute set of piano variations by Glinka, it contained no Russian music. Instead it promised a survey of the kind of Western fare imported and coveted in the 19th century — the sounds that sparked a backlash of desire for a homegrown tradition.

That’s how the 49-year-old society opened with the Duo in G for two violins by Giovanni Battista Viotti, a work so underwhelming that it can only have inspired budding composers by setting the bar low. Benjamin Beilman and Ida Kavafian executed it with brilliant tone and a heroic determination to find drama in its contrasting textures.

Beilman, with limpid pianist Gloria Chien, was also impressive in Liszt’s Grand Duo Concertant for violin and piano on a theme by Charles Philippe Lafont, a French violinist who spent time in Russia. If the Viotti duet was an example of music for domestic consumption, this one came out of the commercial stunt mill of touring virtuosos.

John Field was an Irish pianist who was particularly praised in St. Petersburg for his nocturnes, dreamy miniatures. Chien played the Nocturne No. 2 with singing tone, but could not hide the lack of depth underneath its decorous lyricism. Listeners were also treated to a charming rendition of Mozart’s playful Andante and Five Variations in G for piano, four hands, with Michael Brown joining Chien. And Brown’s reading of Glinka’s variations on a Mozart theme was a highlight by the sheer force of his playing, his sound gently radiant.

With such modest competition, Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E flat should have easily carried the evening. (The tenuous connection offered is Clara Schumann, who made it to Russia on two concert tours.) But this war horse has received more exciting outings at the society; here it was redeemed mostly by Brown’s playing and the cello solos of David Requiro, a highly welcome new addition to the society’s roster.

The question of musical influence also shaped the Israeli Chamber Project’s concert Thursday at Merkin Concert Hall. This time, though, the program was riveting and intelligently conceived, with a rarity at its dramatic center that made you want to rush home and discover more.

The theme was Debussy, who died 100 years ago. The program examined the way elements of his style — open-ended melodies, harmonic ambiguity, and the dissolution of rhythmic conventions — filtered into French music of the 1920s.

The Israeli Chamber Project, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, has always kept an eye out for musical oddities, in part to accommodate its members. These include, along with incisive pianist Assaff Weisman and a handful of excellent string players, clarinetist Tibi Cziger and Sivan Magen, a harpist of astonishing range.

The program opened with Magen’s arrangement for clarinet and harp of Debussy’s “Première Rhapsodie,” a textbook impressionist fantasy completed in 1910 and performed here with a magnetic sense of flow. It was followed by Carlos Salzedo’s Sonata for Harp and Piano, a work of bracing originality and energy written in 1922.

Salzedo was a virtuoso on both these instruments, but built his career as a harpist and teacher of wide-reaching influence. In this sonata teeming with modernist impulses, he calls for a brilliant palette of sounds often created through specific gestures. (His techniques were influenced by choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, with whom he was friendly.)

Fauré's Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano seemed more traditional-minded, but with the material developed through subtle harmonic changes and rhythmic displacement. Guest cellist Peter Wiley joined Cziger and Weisman for a luscious performance. In Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, the rhythmic experiments are much bolder. Wiley and robust-toned violinist Carmit Zori brought out its competitive zest.

The evening ended with Debussy’s Piano Trio in G from 1880, a melody-focused work from a time before Claude sounded like Debussy. But here, at last, was a relic from a genius’ early life that left you feeling illuminated.