Three sophisticated musicians displayed at Auckland Museum

NZTrio
Auckland Museum Auditorium
March 21st

Last weekend the NZTrio gave their first Auckland Museum series concert performing in the new Auditorium. This is one of the best chamber music venues in the city with the audience seated very close to the musicians who are on the stage below them rather than on an elevated stage.

The group consisting of pianist Sarah Watkins, violinist Justine Cormack and cellist Ashley Brown are not flashy or overly dramatic in their performances. They have a cerebral approach to their playing rather than emotional one, but out of that concentration and focus they produce interpretations which evoke not only the emotional reach of the music but also an understanding of its structures and design.

They played two classical works; Beethoven’s Piano Trio “The Ghost” and Schumann’s Piano Trio in D minor along with two contemporary pieces, one by the Australian Stuart Greenbaum and the other by New Zealander Rachel Clement.

They began with Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio which had its genesis in the sketches that Beethoven worked on for an opera based on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. As well as having some of the theatrical aspects which one might expect from an operatic composition the work also has what might be more personal notions of a ghost or angel.

The three instruments shadowed each other, repeating phrases which became like after-images, creating a sense of another dimension.

After their restrained playing of the first two movement they became a lot more vigorous in the final movement, responding to the more experimental and complex nature of the music.

The Schumann Piano Trio is an emotionally expressive work with the composer being fairly specific about how each movement should be played. The opening “with energy and passion” and the third movement played “slowly with perception.”

Throughout the work we are given the sense of a conflicted mind in a search of a resting place. Whether it is the buoyant second movement or the more contemplative third movement the players managed to make each of them express something of the emotional turmoil of the music.

Stuart Greenbaum's "Book of Departures" conveyed the various elements of departure; the sadness of leaving, the excitement of the new adventure as well as ideas about change or digression.

The music was a mixture of popular and classical which provided a capricious alternation between intensity and intimacy.

The NZTrio commission ‘Shifting States” by Rachel Clement was a five part piece which was inspired by the various stages and images of glass making, ranging from the ethereal to hard and brittle. These changing states of the glass also conjured up notions of the subtle relationships between individuals as well.

So, the music was by turns between fiery, airy, taut, effervescent and watery. The players also seemed to mirror the ideas of glass making with their precision and delicate interplay between the instruments.

The players showed impeccable control throughout the concert with extraordinary technical facility and an acute sense of the relationship of the three strands of music they were weaving together.

Over the next few months the NZTrio will be performing at the museum with three more concerts

Concert 2
June 12th, 8.00

Mozart, Piano Quartet in g minor, K 478
Mike Nock, Dialogues, Meditations and Reflections
Schnittke, Piano Quartet – based on a theme by Mahler
Schumann, Piano Quartet
With Robert Ashworth, Viola

Concert 3
August 28th 8.00
Schumann, Adagio and Allegro for cello and piano, Opus 70
Schumann, Fantasiestucke for violin and piano, Opus 73
David Downes Kingdom, NZTrio commission and Auckland Premiere
Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio in a minor, Opus 50

Concert 4
October 30th 8.00
Schumann, Trio No. 3 in g minor, opus 110
Farr/Nunns, Nga Kete e Toru for piano trio and taonga puoro - with Richard Nunns, NZTrio Commission and Auckland Premiere
Beethoven, Piano Trio No.7 in B flat major, Opus 97, “Archduke”