Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
NZ Trio
Unquiet Dream
Auckland Concert Chamber
May 19
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
With their latest concert “Unquiet Dream” the NZ Trio have shown again their ability to deliver concerts featuring music which is innovative as well as drawing on the established canon. This approach shows an intelligent and sophisticated approach to chamber music which makes their concerts always rewarding.
The first work on the programme was Benjamin Britten’s “Introduction and Allegro for Piano Trio”, a very early work in which the young composer was trying out his approaches to the modernist music which was then beginning to take an interest in.
The work opened with the instruments tentatively seeking out an elusive melody, playing various sequences which overlapped and intersected as though the composer was assembling his musical structure out of disparate elements.
Many of these sequences were ethereal, touching on the flickering images of water, wind, shadows and scudding clouds. This search for physicality was reflected in the physicality of the playing of the instruments – the blunt striking of the piano and the sharp rasps of the violin and cello.
In Chris Cree Browns “The Second Triumvirate” he imagines each of the instruments having its own language with which they engage in communications which range from the simple human conversations to the more intricate interactions of animal and bird sounds. All these interchanges there are filled dramatic echoes and reverberations.
Lera Auerbach’s “Trio No2 Triptych” is sub-titled “This mirror has three faces” and she says of the work that “one can look at three different faces or roles of the same person or at three different personalities”.
So, each of the instruments takes on an aspect of the personality which can be in conflict or in harmony with the other. This psychoanalytic approach hints at the idea of multiple personalities or the different faces a person presents – the public, the private or the intimate.
The work is filled with shifting dynamics. Simple sequences develop and change, minimalist statements escalate to create bold and adventurous musical forms.
Shards of music coalesce and then disperse, in surreal juxtaposition, the various elements leaving the image of the person unresolved.
Where things seem to fall apart in Auerbach’s piece there is a very different outcome with Mendelsohn’s “Piano Trio in D Minor”. With this piece the Trio was focussed on drawing all the elements together to create a symphonic sweep for one of his great “songs without words” providing the work with an emotional richness and depth.
The work hints at the composer’s own desires and struggles using the instruments to create a narrative in which he is by turns heroic, romantic and despondent.
Throughout the work pianist Sarah Watkins provided the measured mainstay with both a delicacy and vividness of expression. Amalia Hall’s violin provided a range of emotion from the sensuous to the dramatic and Ashley Brown’s cello ranged from the melancholic to the agitated.
With their playing they were able to capture the romanticism, the wistfulness and the drama of the work as well as effortlessly incorporating references to the composers his own Midsummer Night’s Dream and the that of Bach.
New Zealand Arts Review 