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28 Apr 2006 : Great Concert, small audience
It’s a pity that there was such a small audience in attendance, for this was a splendid concert; an intelligent, unhackneyed programme delivered with skill and polish.
Two short works by New Zealand composers opened it, and each was an arresting, succinct piece. Christopher Cree Brown’s The Triumvirate was an energetic, craggy interplay between the players that displayed a confident understanding of the possibilities of each instrument. It was not a moment too long, and its atonal astringency had a natural fluency that fully engaged the listener. The same could be said of Michael Norris’ Dirty Pixels, which, though it ranged a touch wider and was a little longer, was an angular compelling piece.
Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Trio (1992) had that composers familiar polystylistic elements, ranging from the deceptive simplicity of its opening theme through a range of moods that invited brief remembrances of a number of composers – Philip Glass, Shostakovich and even Schubert. It was a beguiling piece, made the more compelling by a performance of great subtlety and intense polish.
Arvo Part’s brief, deceptively simple take on the slow movement from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F, K.280, stayed very close to the original, but the composer’s colourations were starkly effective without bringing to mind the minimalist tintinnabulations of the music he is best known for.
The concert concluded with Ravel’s masterly Piano Trio in a performance of great intensity and no little beauty. It confirmed that the New Zealand Trio is a superbly balanced world-class ensemble who deserved a much larger audience.
John Button, The Dominion Post, Wellington
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