NZTrio: seductive interpretations
To celebrate their 20th anniversary this year, the NZ Trio have presented a series of linked and nicely curated concerts called Legacy 1, 2 and 3.
NZTrio (from left): Somi Kim (piano), Amalia Hall (violin) Ashley Brown (cello)
The recent Legacy 3 performance at Wellington’s Public Trust Hall revealed NZTrio at their musical best. It offered throughout the most outstanding balance and ensemble playing I’ve heard so far from the current Trio line-up of violinist Amalia Hall, cellist Ashley Brown and pianist Somi Kim. The programme opened, as did Legacy 1 and 2, with two of Schumann’s Six Pieces in Canon, this time completing the set with the last two of these charming miniatures. In a soulful performance almost arch in its stylishness, the three musicians shared Schumann’s simple counterpoint with exquisite moments of rapport.
Each Legacy programme has culminated with a big piano trio from standard repertoire, Beethoven’s ‘Archduke’ in Legacy 1 and Schubert’s scorching late Trio Opus 100 in Legacy 2. For their latest series, they’ve chosen Tchaikovsky’s almost symphonic Piano Trio in A minor Opus 50. For those, like me, who find Tchaikovsky’s extravagant romanticism a little hard to take, this was a seductive interpretation. With a big warm string sound from Hall and Brown and Kim’s rippling pianism, there was no holding back in this open-hearted performance. NZTrio’s brilliant playing was as lush and grand as the music itself. It also fully captured the emotional depth of Tchaikovsky’s elegiac tribute to his friend and colleague, pianist Nikolay Rubinstein - the composer had marked the score "to the memory of a great artist".
NZTrio
“…exquisite rapport”.
I’ve praised before the Trio’s commitment to commissioning new music. This time they premiered Gao Ping’s Searching for the Mountain, a fascinating work by this Chinese composer who has maintained the close links to New Zealand forged during his eight years on the staff of Canterbury University. Ping’s skilful painting of timbres on his musical canvas was breath-taking. His new trio opens with solo cello, the dry, spare sounds and sliding pitches then shared around the ensemble, alternating with dreamy, ethereal moments and dramatic piano interjections, some from inside the instrument. The composer explains that the work is intended “neither to narrate nor depict” but tells of his impressions of visiting a remarkable mountaintop in the Ganzi Tibetan area in the west of Sichuan province. Searching for the Mountain, he says, “is permeated, in an indescribable manner”, by that experience.
Chinese composer Gao Ping
“breathtakingly skilful painting of timbres”
NZTrio also charmed the audience again with their versatile skills in jazzy flavours, on display here in a three-movement Trio written in 1984 by American musician and composer Gunther Schuller. Associated with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, Schuller was also a boundary crosser, combining jazz and classical idioms and coining the term “third stream” for music that spoke both languages. In this Trio the musicians grooved from languid to sprightly, edgy to witty, evoking smoky jazz club ambiance with a whimsical finale over walking bass in piano and cello. The engaging work ended with clever humour as the musicians abandoned their instruments for clicking fingers.
The NZTrio are currently on the road with Legacy 3, with five more concerts coming up including a livestreamed event from Auckland. It’s a satisfying end to a very successful and busy year for one of our finest chamber ensembles – don’t miss it!
Legacy 3 NZTrio Auckland 17 November (live-streamed), Waiheke Island 20 November, Gisborne 6 December, Arrowtown 7 December, Nelson 9 December. More information and tickets