Friday afternoon's concert on board the AmaSerena paired a well-loved and treasured romantic piano trio with two much less well-known works. The result was an uncommonly delightful concert brimming over with ingratiating melodies and darker, more introspective moments.
The concert opened with the Gryphon Trio performing the delightful Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 , by Clara Schumann. With this work, Clara Schumann had plainly emerged from her apprenticeship in the art of composition. Sadly, not much more came to follow it. Her composing career soon took a back seat to promoting the music of her husband through concerts. Listening to the skillful handling of parts in this trio, one can only imagine wistfully what wonders might have emerged if she had continued her work as a composer for many more years.
This trio certainly lives in a post-Mozartean world, and a light touch is essential. There are moments of drama and power in the first and last movements, but even these need to be kept clear and clean as one would do in Mozart, not overloaded with thunder as later composers would do. The Gryphons presented this beautiful rarity with a keen sense of the appropriate scale of tone, finding all the diversity of emotion in the music without overloading it in any way. Their playing in the two central movements, both in the character of intermezzi, was marked by the gentility of teatime conversation among friends, an entirely apt style for this music.
Clarinetist James Campbell then took the stage with pianist Jamie Parker and cellist Roman Borys for three selections from Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, Op. 83 by Max Bruch. This music, previously unknown to me, was composed in 1910 when the composer was 72 years old. The three selections we heard were nicely contrasted, with one handing the melody primarily to the cello which subbed for viola in this performance. As the cello sang the melody, the clarinet provided a gorgeous descant above. The piano part has a few piquant discords which Jamie Parker touched in lightly, without undue emphasis, just enough weight to be heard. On the strength of hearing these three excerpts, I definitely want to hear the entire set -- and with viola, as composed.
The most familiar work in this concert was saved for the end: the large-scale Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 90 "Dumky" by Antonín Dvořák. Familiarity sometimes prevents listeners from recognizing the startling originality of this work. Instead of trying to sandwich the Slavic dumka into such traditional classical forms as the sonata or rondo, as he had done in other works, Dvořák here set the musical style free to be itself, on its own terms. The essence of the dumka is the stark contrasts of mood and temperament within each piece, and Dvořák highlighted those contrasts in each of the trio's unprecedented six movements.
The form originated with epic ballads from the Slavic regions of eastern Europe, and its influence can be traced clearly in the traditional lassu-friss' of the Roma -- music in which slow, mournful sections alternate with wildly energetic, even frenetic fast dances. From the Roma, the style made its way into many corners of western art music: Tchaikovsky (Hungarian and Russian dances in Swan Lake), Liszt (Hungarian Rhapsodies and others), Lehar (the Balkan kolo in The Merry Widow), Brahms (Hungarian Dances), Johann Strauss Jr. (the Czardas in Die Fledermaus), Kodály (Dances of Galánta), Smetana (The Bartered Bride), and many others including -- frequently -- Dvořák.
As one of the composer's most personal works, this Trio demands an equally personal, intuitive response from players and audiences alike. For performers as much as for us who are listeners, Dvořák demands that we follow his lead in setting aside "traditional" expectations of "good form" and simply experience the music on its terms -- not ours.
Each time I hear the Gryphon Trio perform this work, I feel as if I am hearing a completely new performance. Externals are similar in some respects, but always there are points across the six movements where I become acutely aware of aspects of the music which I didn't previously notice. In a world where cookie-cutter performances, endlessly repeated, are valued so highly, this kind of highly personal commitment to the composer's art from musicians is especially to be respected.
The entire journey through this score is a memorable one with the Gryphons as our guides. Slower sections dig deeply down into feelings of sadness, loneliness, introspection. Faster passages revel in fiery energy, rejoicing, even outbursts of anger in some passages. These artists do not fear to push the emotional boundaries without losing control of the music, an essential quality in this of all pieces. The pinpoint precision of the playing in the energetic pages was matched by long-breathed phrasing and feather-light playing in the more emotional quiet passages. A memorable performance of the work by any standard.
nice
ReplyDelete