music & image

Writing in a journalistic style is one of the main challenges I face in my reviews. This review however, begins with one of my better lede's.

Illustrator George Bellow's drawings provided the backdrop, but Tuesday night, all eyes were on the Pittsburgh Piano Trio. At a packed Frick Art Museum in Point Breeze, the group provided a memorable and, at times, raucous conclusion to the "Music for Exhibitions" concert series. In an all-20th-century program, the trio provided musical commentary for the Frick's current exhibition of Bellow's depictions of American life.

Throughout the concert, violinist Jennifer Orchard and cellist Mikhail Istomin traded their musical thoughts seamlessly. Pianist Igor Kraevesky displayed remarkable and consistent awareness for the piano's specific musical role. His artistic pendulum swung smoothly throughout the concert, from making the piano an accompanying instrument to an equal partner with the strings, and to a leading role.

Infused with French harmonies, Joaquin Turina's "Circulo" opened the concert. Illustrating a single day, the trio showed magnificent ensemble playing, adeptly handling the first movement's halting musical gestures. Russian composer Paul Juon's "Litaniae" confirmed the trio's penchant for Romantic compositions. Their conviction for the music was conveyed through tight ensemble work, employing all of the dynamic contrast and rhythmic precision required for a performance in this style to succeed. In each piece, they projected a strong sense of security, with the music and with each other.

The same security got the better of them in Paul Schoenfield's "Cafe Music," a potpourri of popular American styles of the early 20th century. Though at moments they resembled a classical ensemble traipsing through a not-so-classical work, the trio played everything notated on Schoenfield's pages. As admirable as this is, missing from the performance were the nonwritten subtleties they were able to evince in the rest of the night's program. Schoenfield is partly to blame. He titled each movement with bland, generic Italian musical terms. Allegro con fuoco does not do justice to the American Rag style he referenced in the first movement. Especially in the presto finale, the group was too safely tied to the page, never realizing the reckless abandon of the dance hall at which the music hinted.

The evening's highlight was the exciting performance of three movements from Astor Piazzolla's "The Seasons." Arranged for piano trio by Piazzolla's cellist, Jose Bragato, Istomin introduced the abridged performance (there are four seasons) with his recollection of meeting Bragato during a PSO tour of South America. Admitting that Piazzolla's music gets his "blood boiling," Istomin and company's performance had the same effect on the audience. In quintessential Piazzolla fashion, the trio played with crisp articulations and turn-on-a-dime tempo shifts. It found the musically authentic colors and flavors left wanting in Schoenfield's "Cafe."

Two encores, a palate-cleansing "Russian Waltz" by Frank Bridge, performed in memoriam to Mstislav Rostropovich, and a short, well-balanced tango summarized the evening's highlights.

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