Review: Music for Three – Part I
Resolved: Oklahoma State law should require that all winter concerts begin with Haydn. Happily, no laws were required to persuade pianist Amy Cheng, violinist Gregory Lee, and cellist Tomasz Zieba to open Brightmusic’s February 9 concert with Haydn’s resplendent Trio in C Major, the perfect opener to Part 1 of a two-part series dubbed “Music for Three.” The series, devoted to the art of the trio, began symmetrically with two piano trios separated by a trio for trumpet, violin, and piano. Classical, Romantic, and modern periods were represented in the music of Haydn, Dvorak, and Ewazen.
Bundled in winter coats and mufflers, the audience gleaned what it is accustomed to gleaning from Brightmusic: superb playing from our city’s finest chamber musicians. Leave it to artistic directors Amy Cheng and Chad Burrow to mix traditional masterpieces with perfectly chosen works from the contemporary repertoire, offering novelty and familiarity – and extraordinary variety.
Brightmusic’s February concert was the perfect revenge for piano enthusiasts who bristle at the notion of the string quartet as the ultimate vehicle of chamber music. Piano trios are quartets when the pianist’s left and right hands are regarded as separate instruments. Brightmusic’s trio celebration began thus appropriately with music from the string quartet’s chief architect and proponent, Franz Joseph Haydn. His brilliant Trio in C major, Hob. XV: 27, one of the late trios, breaks the mold of “piano sonata with string accompaniment” (ironically, a paraphrase of the trio’s original title) by empowering strings in the presence of a virtuosic piano part.
Eric Ewazen’s Trio for trumpet, violin, and piano, composed in 1992 and modeled on Brahms’s Horn Trio, was perfectly placed at the center of the program. Trumpeter Michael Anderson evoked the trumpet’s rich lyricism in a beautifully crafted piece that emphasized the instrument’s expressive quality. Comprised of four movements, the work evoked a rich and varied landscape: funereal serenity in the first movement, intensity and agitation in the second, melancholic introspection in the third, and exhilaration in the fourth. The audience was reminded that color, beauty, and tonality are not anathema to the twentieth century, but characteristic of some of its finest art.
The second half of the program featured the last and best known of Dvorak’s piano trios, Trio in E minor, the “Dumky.” Although controversy surrounds the etymology of “Dumky” (either a “fleeting thought” or a Ukrainian lament), no controversy surrounds the choice of this work as a finale to an excellent concert. Comprised of six movements, the piece abandons traditional forms (i.e., sonata and theme-and-variation) for a structure in which slow melancholic sections alternate with fast vivacious ones. Dvorak’s enchantment with folk tunes manifests itself throughout the work.
The quality of musicianship at Brightmusic has been justly lauded. The quality of programming deserves no less praise. February’s concert illustrates the effect of mixing talent with imagination: a resplendent offering capable of launching an enchanted audience into the winter cold with enough warmth to herald spring, and with it, part 2 of the trio series.
Ed. Note: Dr. Steve Blevins is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma; an internist at OU Physicians; an accomplished pianist; a devotee of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and other classical music events; the witty author of the Internet blog “Borborygmi,” and a member of the boards of directors of the Civic Music Association, Chamber Music in Oklahoma and, we are proud to say, Brightmusic.
