Trio's warmth saves a rainy day

Murray Black | August 21, 2007

TrioZ
Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House, August 19.

THE organisers of the Sydney Opera House's Utzon Room chamber music series are on to a good thing. Not even a cold, windy and rainy afternoon could prevent a capacity crowd from attending this concert by TrioZ, the sixth in the series.

Pianist Kathryn Selby must also feel she's on to a good thing with her new trio partners, Niki Vasilakis (violin) and Emma-Jane Murphy (cello).

In his short introduction, series curator Marshall McGuire promised that the eloquence of TrioZ's music-making would speak for itself. For the most part, it did.

Although they have been together less than a year, there is an energy and enthusiasm in TrioZ's performances that sometimes eluded Selby's previous group, the Macquarie Trio. Alert and responsive, they astutely varied their sound in each of the three works they performed while maintaining good balance.

Australian composer Ross Edwards was on hand to introduce his Piano Trio (1998). He said writing much of it was an agonising process. Not that you could tell: the three movements formed a finely proportioned work of great beauty.

And beauty was the focus of TrioZ's performance. Deep, soulful laments from Murphy's cello were answered by Vasilakis's highly expressive violin lines. The Iberian-tinged sonorities and colours of Selby's pianism evoked the spirits of Albeniz and Granados.

The group also captured the work's contrasting character, establishing a compelling atmosphere of probing intensity in the ruminative middle movement before tearing into the Maninyas finale with thrilling, muscular vigour and pungent rhythmic acuity.

Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No.1 followed and TrioZ created a luscious, full-bodied romantic sound for it. In the outer movements, the ensemble's rapid tempos and driving urgency created immense excitement while contrasting passages of soaring lyricism were sinuously phrased.

Selby realised the bubbling virtuosity of the piano part with fluency throughout, and Vasilakis's and Murphy's tonal warmth and subtle dynamic shading sustained a mood of heartfelt tenderness in the slow movement. Only a stolid, heavy-handed account of the evanescent scherzo disappointed.

The concert opened with a trio sonata by C.P.E. Bach, one of the twin inspirations behind Joern Utzon's design for the room (the other being artist Raphael). Although the reading was crisply articulated and had strong unison attack, it seemed dutiful rather than stylish.

More imaginative inflections of phrasing, dynamics and rhythm would have infused their performance with elegance and spontaneity.

There were some other problems, too. Vasilakis's tone was intermittently edgy and shrill, and Selby was sometimes slightly too prominent in the mix. Nonetheless, on the evidence of this recital, TrioZ has the makings ofa chamber music ensemble of the first rank.