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1 April 2011
Chamber Music New Zealand's 2011 Kaleidoscopes Concert Season got off to a brilliant start on Wednesday evening.
The Theatre Royal audience, containing a goodly number of younger fans, was immediately responsive to the dynamic playing of the Eggner Trio from Austria.
Take three brothers growing up and studying piano, violin and cello in the fervent musical heat of Linz, Salzburg and Vienna and a highly successful piano trio has emerged. Their performance level is dazzling.
The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires by Piazzola opened the programme. With its swashbuckling syncopation alternating with despondently passionate solo melodies, this was heartstring-tugging stuff. The performers wrung every drop of expression from this emotionally charged music and the listeners loved it.
A commission from Christchurch's Sunday Classics Incorporated just three years ago resulted in Tales of Old Russia by Australian composer and pianist Ian Munro. Inspired by ageless Russian folk tales, these pieces employed a huge palette of sound colours and these players never ceased to amaze and delight our ears.
Their floating bows and phrasing conveyed vast landscapes; the piano lost its percussiveness and magic prevailed. The tight rhythmic precision of the trio was never better than in the novel sequence on woodblocks, guiro and piano body.
Camille Saint-Saens' Trio in E minor, returning to the familiarity of diatonic keys and harmonies, demanded even more skills. With their sumptuous string sound and shimmering piano accompaniment, the brothers created a broad architecture first movement of long sustained phrases with tight intricate rhythms underneath. The rare five-beat second movement might have tied up some toe-tappers. Two more relaxed movements led to a brilliantly busy finale, ending with an impeccable unison passage.
The audience demanded an encore and they obliged with an intensely lively Praeludium by contemporary Austrian composer Sacha Peres.