Piano Trio in D, Op 70 No 1 - Beethoven
Pianotrio (1998) - Anders Nilsson
How to Make the Water Sound - Deirdre Gribbin
Piano Trio No 2 in E minor, Op 67 - Shostakovich
As part of a new scheme to encourage Irish musicians to perform abroad, Music Network/ESB has collaborated with the Swedish Concert Institute; Trio Mats are touring Ireland while the duo of Hugh Tinney (piano) and Catherine Leonard (violin) tour Sweden.
Monday's recital opened with Beethoven's aptly named Ghost Trio. Even if only the second of the three movements deserves the sobriquet, its eerie atmosphere cannot but colour one's reactions to the ostensibly cheerful outer movements. Trio Mats did not, rightly, play it as a strange work, but the strangeness came through the playing, which was forceful but not overweening.
Beethoven is a hard act to follow, and Nilsson's strongly rhythmic Pianotrio was short on expressive feeling in spite of some mysterious interludes of harmonics on mutual strings. Its robotic gestures, rigidly controlled, were not as appealing as the delicate, non-rhythmic patterns of Deirdre Gribbin's How to Make the Water Sound. This work relied less on the timing of notes than on the balance of overlapping pitches; the sense of freedom given by its seemingly improvisatory nature was one of its most attractive features.
Shostakovich lived through terrible times and his piano trio has a nightmarish quality as of a fugitive, escaping but never finding refuge. The music sounds driven by demons, and Trio Mats conveyed the sense of subterranean energy and unremitting strain.
