Undercover Masterpiece

For years people have asked Cellist Janos Starker to name the piece he most enjoys performing. "The one by Brahms --if only he had written it for cello," was the virtuoso's reply. He was referring, he would explain, to Opus 78, the G Major Sonata for Violin and Piano, an introspective work tinged with Nordic melancholy. "It is the most glorious Brahms," says Starker, "and it has been the dream of all cellists some day to be able to play it." No one, however, dared transcribe the violin work for cello, but early this year a transcription by Brahms himself was discovered. Last week at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill., Starker and Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder unveiled it.

Unlike the pair of Chopin waltzes that Pianist Byron Janis found in a French chateau in 1967, the Brahms Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Major has not languished in some dark castle. For some 60 years it had been filed and forgotten in the library of the Vienna Municipal Conservatory. Six months ago Gottfried Marcus, a pianist and musicologist, happened across the manu script. This spring the work was per formed on a Viennese television culture short. "I was in the middle of rebuild ing my house, in the midst of the mess with a TV going in the corner, and I happened to hear a cellist playing the Brahms violin sonata," recalls Buchbinder, 27. Elated, the young Austrian pianist contacted Marcus and obtained a photostatic copy of the score. Three weeks ago he sent it to Starker, and arrangements with Ravinia were made.

Like many composers, Brahms was in the habit of making transcriptions, mainly to double his royalties, although he often concealed his authorship in a pseudonym. This transcription is unsigned, but it carries the unmistakable stamp of the master. No one but Brahms would have dared change the key, Starker points out -- an inspired musical per mutation that illuminates the cello's lower register and exploits the instrument's mellow color and timbre. The composer also made some 200 alterations, mostly minor, in the score which he probably recast for his friend, the eminent 19th century cellist Robert Hausmann. At the end of the second movement Brahms added a section for the cello and switched a violin part to the piano. In the final movement he reversed the piano and string parts, al lowing the cello to lead off.

Earlier in this century, composers rarely featured the cello, considering it a lowly second cousin to the violin. Artists like Pablo Casals, Gregor Piatigorsky, Mstislav Rostropovich and Starker revealed the silken tonal beauty of the instrument. Still, the repertory remains narrow. Starker speculates that this Brahms sonata, written in the year of the composer's death (1897), may have been his last work. In any event, his publisher died soon after. With the decline of the firm, copies of the Brahms sonata may have been overlooked until at last the so nata disappeared from view.

Starker, whose reputation as an un sentimental musical intellect is as familiar as his flawless intonation, is almost buoyant with his new toy. Even the so bering milestone of a recent 50th birthday could not blight his joy. "I love it so much," he says with uncharacteristic exuberance, "that I am doing things I could never do with anything else. For me, emotion must give way to form and structure. But I love this piece so that I'm inclined to let my hair down." Starker is balding.

Called the "Ram Song" sonata be cause Brahms borrowed the melody of his Opus 59 Regenlied, the D major so nata emerged a varied, complex work with some diabolical technical demands. But Starker plays the cello as naturally as others speak. From a firm and steady bow a shimmering melodic line un wound, juxtaposed with rich chords. After the performance Starker said, "You'd think Brahms had written it for the cello."

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