To celebrate their 21st birthday, NZTrio toured the country for Chamber Music New Zealand with a series of concerts that featured all three of Brahms's Piano Trios. In Auckland they performed the first of the three.
NZTrio - Somi Kim, Ashley Brown, Amalia Hall Photo: Jen Raoult
MOZART: Piano Trio No 3 in Bb K502
Charlotte Wilson in her programme notes for this series of concerts doesn’t mince her words: “this trio is as perfect as chamber music gets.”
It's hard to argue with that. In its charm, grace, balance, it feels like it couldn’t be beaten. Above all, it has in spades the character that is the essence of what chamber music is all about – a congenial conversation of friends, loving each other’s company.
Arvo PÄRT: Mozart-Adagio
Mozart-Adagio is an arrangement of the second movement from Mozart's Piano Sonata in F, K280.
Pärt has taken extraordinary liberties though, colouring harmonies and exploring new sonorities and textures. The result is otherworldly.
Gareth FARR: Forbidden Colours
The composer writes:
"I became intrigued by a phenomenon called 'forbidden colours' - unseeable by the human eye because their light frequencies automatically cancel each other out. Try to imagine reddish green – not the dull brown you get when you mix the two pigments together, bur rat a colour that is somewhat like red and somewhat like green. This colour exists, but we can't see it.
"The piece establishes itself as a blurry, impressionistic texture – but soon, things start popping into focus, and then sliding away again out of view. I have tried to create the musical equivalent of when you have to strain your eyes to make something out – to even ascertain if you're looking at anything at all, or if it's just figment of your retinas."
BRAHMS: Piano Trio No 1 in B Op 8
Brahms first wrote this trio in 1854 ... he was 20. He had recently come into contact with the great violinist Joseph Joachim, and through him he’d been introduced to Clara and Robert Schumann who would remain close friends and influences through the rest of his life.
35 years later and after he’d completed another two piano trios, he was working on a complete edition of his works and he decided to revise this early work extensively.
He wrote to Clara: “With what childish amusement I while away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?”
Well, many people have a fondness for the wild original, but most go along with his revisions which tighten up the form and temper his youthful extravagances.
BRAHMS: Hungarian Dance No 6
As an encore, an arrangement of the Hungarian Dance in D flat major for solo piano - transposed up to D for piano trio.
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Concert Chamber, 10 May 2023
Producer: Tim Dodd
Engineer: Adrian Hollay
