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16 Nov 2009 : Talented trio achieves faultless rapport
The New Zealand Trio gave a recital entitled “Flourishes” in Marama Hall on Saturday evening. The audience may have been rather small, but the performers’ talents were enormous, and their polished performance showed why they receive rave reviews.
Sarah Watkins (piano), Justine Cormack (violin) and Ashley Brown (cello) are all top soloists in their own right and, having played together since this trio was formed in 2002, they achieve a faultless rapport.
Mozart’s Piano Trio in B flat Major, KV 502 opened with spirited character and a sparkle which lifted the entire work, mainly due to the pianist, who set the delivery with unbelievable lightness of touch and subtle pedalling. Motif after motif flowed with graceful elegance and charm from all three in an outstanding performance.
Arvo Part (b. Estonia 1935) is well known as a composer of contemporary style. Mozart-Adagio is his arrangement of a Mozart piano sonata slow movement. “Interesting”, with dissonance very foreign to the original, was treated so differently overall that Mozart was almost totally disguised.
Entering the Stream (2009) was commissioned by the NZTrio. Wayan Yudane specialises in teaching and writing music for Balinese gamelan. His two-movement work contained many unusual ethereal shadings and statements from nature. Light wispy passages, bird calls and sonorous gamelanean passages from the cello combined to create a pleasant atmospheric effect.
Eve de Castro-Robinson’s At Water’s Birth was in somewhat similar vein, with spoken poetry and whispered lines adding to the performance textures. One becomes accustomed to de Castro-Robinson’s sound-world and the intensity with which she explores a subject through its musical revolution, and this trio revelled in their interpretation with great success.
Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio in A Minor, a four-movement work of many moods, was brilliantly performed, with haunting themes and scintillating textural colours, calmly rhapsodic or tempestuous, fully explored by the trio.
Elizabeth Bouman - Otago Daily Times
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