 |
|
|
|
1 Oct 2003 : Three-way win for local group
The New Zealand Trio must now be reckoned, on the strength of Sunday’s concert, as among the best chamber groups in the country: we only await the permanent return of Sarah Watkins from NewYork where she teaches, for their consolidation into a very important element in our musical landscape.
They played two pieces by New Zealand composers; Gareth Farr’s Ahi, written in 1998 and Maria Grenfell’s A Feather of Blue (to be played again next year by the visiting Vienna Piano Trio). The Farr piece is a significant contribution to the repertoire, a piece that by its nature can not impress or astonish by blazing orchestral colours or rhythmic excitement. The first movement, Semplice, is indeed simple evidence of Farr’s mastery of traditional compositional techniques, and the ability to hold the attention as his ideas evolve. The second and fourth movements carry hints of composers like Prokofiev and Martinu – tuneful, pungent, ear-catching. The Trio made it sound like an old master.
The same stylistic confidence infused Maria Grenfell’s piece, shaded with pastel, impressionistic colours, but enlivened in the middle with more energy.
The concert began with Beethoven’s Ghost Trio and ended with Mendelssohn’s in d minor (Opus 49, No.1). The contrast between the two works, written thirty years apart, was an instructive lesson in why the idea of ‘progress’ in the arts is nonsense. Not only did the trio, which has established remarkable rapport in quite a short time, play each work with an air of authority, with confident ensemble and brilliance, it also allowed us to hear how a later work, less adventurous to he sure, could prove as satisfying and delightful as an earlier, more original one.
Lindis Taylor, Dominion Post
|
|
|
|
|
