A harmonious relationship for mother and son

In recent years Jonathan Biss has established himself as one of the most serious and intelligent young pianists before the public. It seems, however, that he's not above a bit of wry humor. The biography on Biss's website states that though he was born in 1980, he made his professional debut several months earlier, having "performed, prenatally, the Mozart A Major Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall, with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Lorin Maazel."

Of course the real soloist was Biss's mother, the accomplished violinist Miriam Fried. Nevertheless, the musical bond between the two is a lengthy and enduring one. As he mentioned during a recent phone interview, "I don't remember a time when I played the piano that we didn't play together."

Fried and Biss are currently in the midst of a two-concert series at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum bringing together the three violin sonatas of Brahms and the two of Bartok. The first sonatas of both composers were heard last Sunday; the rest are on tap for Sunday afternoon.

The two spoke last week from Fried's studio at New England Conservatory, where she's on the faculty, passing the phone back and forth to answer a reporter's questions about their collaborations, which Fried dates to when Biss was about 10 years old. "I was much older when it occurred to me that there was anything even remotely unusual about playing chamber music at that age with a professional violinist," he says. "It seemed like the most natural thing in the world."

So often, though, such relationships are anything but natural, as the mix of the artistic and the familial elements can be a combustible one. Yet Fried and Biss agree that theirs has been a remarkably harmonious partnership.

"From the time we started playing together, we somehow managed to have a playing relationship separate from our personal relationship," says Fried. "I really feel that there was never the tension that you hear about when family members work together." One can imagine that the temptation on the part of the parent to direct the child's development must be almost irresistible, but Fried says that "Jonathan was quite assertive at a very young age. I understood that I had to not interfere - let him make a certain number of mistakes and find out from that."

"It's always been amazing to me that we've not had any serious conflict when we work together," adds Biss, "and I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that we don't seem to have any musical disagreements. I wouldn't say that's a genetic thing, but the result of the fact that this is the first music making I heard."

Those early domestic experiences served as a cornerstone in Biss's development. His presence on world stages is steadily growing as word spreads about his thoughtful, refined musicianship and understated way of throwing fresh light on familiar scores. His third recording for the EMI label, due for release on Tuesday, consists of four Beethoven sonatas ranging from the "Pathétique" (Op.13) to the E Major Sonata (Op.109).

"I feel tremendously lucky that I'm doing this," he says. "And I feel particularly lucky that I've pretty much been able to do it on my own terms, playing the repertoire I love and not making any serious musical compromises. I don't think I could have allowed myself to imagine that things would have gone this shockingly well on a professional level."

Their programs for the Gardner concerts are especially intriguing, with Bartok's pointed abstractions playing off of Brahms's soulful Romanticism. "We've found that there's something about the aesthetic of these two composers that really works very well together," Fried says. "They're both very passionate and very dramatic but in entirely different ways."

Biss, for his part, is fascinated by the way both composers evolved as they matured. "The two first [sonatas] are not just large but sprawling," he says. "What's so interesting is that both composers, in the works that are later in life, put their ideas much more concisely. That's something I really enjoy about these two programs."

The whole conversation seems to be a microcosm of their musical rapport, with each adding to and complementing, the other's thoughts while retaining a healthy measure of autonomy.

"Even now, as we were rehearsing," Biss says, "we were in the middle of the Bartok First and going through details. And then we decided to take a break and immediately it sort of morphed into the other half of our relationship. And somehow it just works."

Sunday at 1:30 p.m. 617-278-5156, gardnermuseum.org

Opening salvos

Two inventive chamber ensembles kick off their seasons on Saturday with typically eclectic, well-assembled programs. The Chameleon Arts Ensemble offers "strands of a trio twining," a concert of threesomes that includes an early, little-known work by Beethoven for flute, bassoon, and piano. Also on the bill are trios by Brahms, Penderecki, Ingolf Dahl, and Daron Hagen. That's at the Goethe-Institut Boston. chameleonarts.org

Trios are also the main course on Radius Ensemble's opener, which features a work for clarinet, horn, and piano by serialist-turned-Romantic George Rochberg, as well as Schubert's majestic Piano Trio in E-flat (D. 929). The curtain-raiser is Villa-Lobos's highly enjoyable "Assobio a játo (The Jet Whistle)" for flute and cello. That's at MIT's Killian Hall. radiusensemble.org