TRIO
PHOENIX
Esplanade
Recital Studio
Monday
(29 June 2015 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 July 2015 with the title "Impressive debut of trio".
Formed by three postgraduate students of
the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore , Trio Phoenix made its
first appearance two nights ago at Esplanade Recital Studio. Two of its members
would have been familiar to local audiences, as Singaporean violinist Alan Choo
and Thai pianist Akkra Yeunyonghattaporn were active performers as
undergraduates at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. Completing the threesome is
Taiwanese cellist Tzu-Jou Yeh.
Their programme was a diverse one,
combining music from the Baroque, Romantic and modern eras. It opened with an
arrangement of three movements from Jean-Philippe Rameau's Pieces de Clavecin en Concert No.5, originally for harpsichord,
violin and viola da gamba. While authenticity (or the lack of) was never an
issue here, the trio strived to replicate the baroque feel in the three dances,
each named after a personality of the times.
The strings eschewed vibrato while the
piano traipsed lightly, and there was much to admire in the transparency in
textures. The first movement (La
Forqueray) highlighted counterpoint, the second (La Cupis) sang like an operatic aria, while the third (La Marais) was an upbeat and jolly
dance.
After this palate cleanser, the more
serious business took the form of Alfred Schnittke's Piano Trio (1985/1992). Schnittke (1934-1998) was the most
important Russian composer of the post-Shostakovich era, and his supposed compositional style was known as
polystylism, a bewildering mix of the new and old, and everything else in
between. This very dark and inward-looking work
in two connected movements was built upon an inversion of a theme
resembling the ubiquitous Birthday Song.
Instead of good cheer, the music plunged
into depths of unrelieved gloom, with braying dissonances and “wrong notes”
littering its path. The trio traversed its thorny pages with intense
concentration, veering between concord and discord within a split second and
back, all through its disquieting and schizophrenic course, before closing with
Choo's violin imitating terminal tinnitus.
The patient audience's reward was a rare
performance of Mendelssohn's Second Piano
Trio in C minor (Op.66), a welcome departure from its often-programmed predecessor
(Op.49). Yet both works have remarkable similarities in four movements,
beginning urgently and passionately before settling to a seamless song without
words in the slow movement.
All three musicians were well balanced in
the hall's somewhat boomy acoustics, and that was largely down to pianist
Akkra's utmost sensitivity in supporting his partners without overwhelming
them. Cellist Yeh lapped up all her cantabile moments, a perfect foil to Choo's
incisiveness and scintillating piano runs.
The mercurial Scherzo was a case in
point, which flew on feathery wings, followed by a gratifying Finale which
dovetailed two divergent melodies – in minor and major keys – for a brilliant
conclusion. The second melody, a Lutheran hymn also known by Anglophones as The Old Hundredth is regularly heard in
Protestant churches here as a doxology of thanksgiving.
Trio Phoenix 's encore was a reprise
of Rameau's La Cupis, a fitting
benediction to a most impressive of debuts.
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