St Ann’s Church, Dublin
★★★☆☆
It’s an unfair world. And in music the number of string trios of any combination of instruments is dwarfed by the much, much larger repertoire for string quartets. All the more reason to welcome a newly formed international string trio making its debut in a tour for Music Network.
Their programme is nicely balanced between the 18th and 21st centuries, with two works from each, Mozart and Beethoven at one end of the spectrum, Dobrinka Tabakova and Ed Bennett at the other.
I caught the tour at an inhospitably chilly and draughty St Ann’s Church, on Dawson Street in Dublin city centre. My heart went out to the players, as I once performed at the venue myself, with snow on the street outside and unavoidably chilly fingers inside. Memorable for all the wrong reasons.
The inclement conditions didn’t seem to reduce the new trio’s capacity for tonal finesse, but it did seem to challenge them in terms of accuracy, especially given the racy nature of some of the tempos that they set.
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The more recent works got the better end of the deal. The Bulgarian-born, London-trained composer Dobrinka Tabakova (born 1980) wrote her Insight in 2002 for the Asch Trio, of which Maxim Rysanov is a member. Tabakova likes cluster-rich, wall-of-sound effects, and her control of timbre in Insight is a reconception of the world of the string trio, re-forming as if it’s a single instrument, a kind of super-hurdy-gurdy or accordion, that plays out without the sentimentality of much of her larger-scale work.
The Irish composer Ed Bennett, who knew both Rysanov and Tabakova at college, is best known for high-energy, forcefully driven work. In his spoken introduction he explained the altogether different character of his spare, bleak, sometimes even keening Imbolc Meditation as being the influence of the time of year he wrote it. And the choice of title is reflected in the lightening of the clouds towards its conclusion.
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The playing of Beethoven’s String Trio in G, Op 9 No 1, and Mozart’s great Divertimento in E flat, K563, was frustratingly patchy. Moments of astonishing beauty — especially in the soft-textured nap of some of the quietest playing — rubbed shoulders with helter-skelter passages with rough ensemble and off-centre intonation. Maybe these three experienced chamber musicians haven’t fully adapted to each other yet, or it could be that the inhospitable venue was the cause.
On a Music Network tour to Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin (today, 8pm); Kilkenny Castle, Kilkenny (tomorrow, 8pm); Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely, Co Wicklow (St Patrick’s Day, 8pm); the Dock, Carrick-On-Shannon (Saturday, March 18th, 8pm); Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal (Sunday, March 19th, 4pm); and Station House Theatre, Clifden, Co Galway (Tuesday March 21st, 8pm); tickets available online except for Clifden, where they are available at the door
