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Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre |
Much was made in this program’s pre-publicity about the provenance of the sobriquet for Beethoven’s 1809 Piano Trio in D Op. 70 No. 1. Czerny found suggestions of Hamlet’s father in the middle Largo; other commentators make a fuss about the word ‘Macbett’ found in some Beethoven sketches near this movement. Whatever the case, we’re stuck with Czerny’s nickname which might have some relevance to the bleak Elsinore battlements, certainly more than the blasted desert place populated by those three prescient grey ladies. |
Our participating trio – violin Kristian Winther, cello Timo-Veikko Valve, pianist Aura Go – laid the mystery to rest early (as much as they could) by programming the Ghost Trio first. It was a highly sympathetic interpretation, packed with restrained vim in its outer movements, even if the players elected not to repeat the first Allegro‘s second ‘half’ – bars 74 to 249; understandable, as it’s a hefty slab to play again, especially if you think the message has been passed along readily enough. Still, it was a pleasure while it lasted, mainly for Winther’s care with the violin line’s phrasing and Go’s abstinence from taking over the joint. |
For the haunted movement, these performers opted for a faster tempo than other ensembles, e.g. the Beaux Arts from the early 2000s. Yet this definition gave the piano figurations a more impressive contour, the downward scales more of an evanescence than the usual slow trickle. As well, both strings made telling work of the sotto voce suggestions by either not using vibrato or by employing it sparingly; at least, at the start and end. |
As expected, the ensemble gave us the Presto‘s exposition repeat and carried off those sudden pauses/caesurae and their consequent launches back into action with excellent collegiality. Indeed, that assured trust seemed to me the central hallmark of this interpretation; not that remarkable coming from players who have known each other for many years but reassuring in a trio put together for this tour, although I suppose you’d expect their work to be polished in this fifth performance out of six. |
Next we were given the premiere (for this part of the country) of University of Melbourne writer Melody Eotvos‘ fresh score Regnare, her Piano Trio No. 3. This was commissioned in part by Musica Viva Australia, the presenters of this recital. As a kicking-off point, this one-movement work takes its impetus from the mountain ash which has a kind of natural command because it’s the world’s tallest flowering plant. How you communicate the tree’s supreme individuality is impossible to determine. We have a good deal of low piano growling, a kind of subterranean root-spread, while the strings seem to carry on an aphoristic dialogue which reaches its apogee in an unaccompanied duet of striking effectiveness. |
But Regnare is chameleonic in its language which makes aggressive use of the piano’s capacity for multiple dissonances while also taking on a European folk-song flavour in its later pages, some passages reminiscent of Bartok’s sophisticated integration of his discoveries in that field. Still, you’re on a hiding to nothing when you set up terms of reference that take the listener back to the vision of a static entity like foliage, no matter how majestic. |
Mind you, Eotvos did herself few favours with a a speech of sorts before we heard the work. I was in the front five rows of the Hall and caught about half of what she was saying. Apart from nervously laughing at a few jokes that she produced for her own amusement and our puzzlement, the information she provided added very little to the program notes with nothing forthcoming about compositional details or structure, the score’s progress or its intended effect. This only reinforced my opinion about speaking at musical events: you have to be able to speak and you have to have something pertinent to say. Otherwise, you just add to, even complicate the mystery – not helpful when your listeners face a piece couched in advanced musical language. |
After interval, we struck a French vein. First came Lili Boulanger’s D’un soir triste, the short-lived composer’s last score which exists in three formats: piano trio, piano and cello duet, and orchestra. This is sombre music that isn’t just sad but climaxes in a powerful, tragic outburst before sinking back to a resigned recollection at the end. If anything was notable in its bleak passage, it came in Go’s dynamic control across the long chain of right-hand 9th chords with which the piano sustains the initial and concluding melodic action, such as it is. |
As for Winther and Valve, their most impressive moments came in doubled passages, like the passionate threnody from bar 66 to bar 73; and later, another outpouring that began almost menacingly at bar 170, then broadening to a full-throated plaint from bar 178 to bar 183. But, for all that the work was written by a dying woman, the emotional environment offers more starkness than you’d expect from a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel; this was a writer who demonstrated an impressive rigour of intent right up to the last E minor murmurs. |
Concluding the recital, the ensemble played the Ravel Piano Trio of 1914: a welcome regular on many programs using this instrumental format and well-known to those of us who frequent Melbourne’s chamber music competitions. I doubt if I can offer anything by way of novel commentary on this reading which unfolded cleanly enough, although you had to query some dynamic imbalances in the even-numbered movements where Go was – like every pianist essaying this work – hard-pressed. |
For example, in the Pantoum, the piano contribution starting at Number 16 in my old Durand score sounded laboured, even those black-note glissandi, and the admittedly disjunct main theme statement at Number 19 jerked into position rather than slotting in as a clever-clever variant. As for the Passacaille, Go set a steady pace rather than a funereal one for the Tres large direction and the Winther/Valve combination followed her sweeping rise to the Number 6 climax of this sarabande with vital dynamic weight. Valve sounded under some articulation stress about four bars before Number 7, but his later exposure at Number 9 as the ground bass sinks slowly earthward impressed for its (muted) resonance and gravity. |
I first heard this work from the Ormond Trio – violin John Glickman, cello John Kennedy, piano Nancy Weir – in one of those Melbourne University Monday lunchtime recitals in Wilson Hall back in 1962/3 and the only memory I have is of the astonishing weight of Weir’s chords in the Final that begin a bar before Number 12 and which ride over everything in the last seven bars of the score. Every so often, you come across a pianist who yields no ground here, letting the two strings haul away as best they can, heard only in the spaces between every powerful six, seven or eight-member clutch of keyboard notes. |
Go, to my mind, let her partners enjoy too much of the foreground here so that each element of their arabesques, semiquaver repeated notes and trills was audible to a remarkably clear degree. As usual, the work’s conclusion was greeted with warm acclaim from this audience but, for my part, the massive tension that erupts in these last pages failed to materialise, possibly because Go was over-considerate of her colleagues. If the group ever re-forms for another reading of this great work, I hope she takes to the middle of the highway across this movement and stays there. |
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