TRIOZ on song despite forced program change

Melba Hall, April 9

BECAUSE of an accident which cut one of her hands, TRIOZ pianist Kathryn Selby had to change the scheduled program for her latest Selby and Friends recital on Wednesday.

While Beethoven's Archduke remained in place, Ross Edwards' fine Piano Trio of 1997 replaced an Elena Kats-Chernin piece, the substitute giving wide exposure to the soaring lines of violinist Niki Vasilakis and cellist Emma-Jane Murphy, Selby emerging with emphatic Maninyas-style flourishes in the hectic finale.

The Beethoven performance showed workmanlike reliability up to the Andante cantabile where, at the third variation, the players struck gold with a rich empathy of colour and weighting that showed why this ensemble stands apart from others, even if the finale missed out on continuing the magic.

Finally, in place of the scheduled Rachmaninov D minor, TRIOZ played the always striking Shostakovich Piano Trio No 2 in E minor, a staple of chamber music competitions and hence subject to youthful maltreatment. This version saw the work as an unrelieved tragedy from start to end.

Selby observed a steadfast deliberation throughout the four movements, unleashing her percussive vehemence only at carefully selected points, while Vasilakis and Murphy gave several instances of exemplary duet work and, in Vasilakis' case, a searing purity of sound in her many non-vibrato sentences. As with all successful realisations of this work, the final bars were greeted by a long silence - the finest tribute possible to the players of their interpretation.