Yesterday evening the Neave Trio streamed a live performance from the Edward M. Pickman Concert Hall at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, which is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The members of the trio are violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura; and, prior to yesterday, I knew their work only through the recordings they have released. The group is currently Faculty Ensemble-in-Residence at Longy; and yesterday’s program, entitled Rising, was the first of four planned performances for the season.
The performance itself was preceded by a conversation among the three performers in which they explained their choice of title. The music selection for the program was intended to address the question “What does it mean to rise?” However, I am afraid I was not convinced by their explanations.
Far more interesting was that they prepared a program that advanced (rose?) through three centuries of music history. Furthermore, they chose selections that have received relatively little attention in chamber music programming. The program began in 1846 with Clara Schumann’s Opus 17 trio in G minor. 1846 was the year in which her husband, Robert, began to recover from neurasthenia, probably allowing her time to work on her own composition efforts. The second selection advanced to 1923 with one of Dmitri Shostakovich’s earliest mature works, his Opus 8 (first) trio in C minor. The program then concluded in 2003 with Jennifer Higdon’s only piano trio (to date). The entire concert lasted about 50 minutes, played without an intermission.
Clara’s Opus 17 predates all three of Robert’s piano trios, the first two of which, Opus 63 in D minor and Opus 80 in F major, were composed in the year after she completed Opus 17. Her trio is definitely an excellent example of her finding her own voice before her husband ventured into the same genre. She used a four-movement architecture with the Scherzo preceding the Andante in the inner movements. Her rhetoric may be a bit more understated than that of her husband, but there is much to admire in her capacity for thematic invention and instrumental textures. This trio is as worthy of “standard repertoire” status as her husband’s three trios; and Neave sent a loud-and-clear message to this effect that deserves to be considered by other chamber ensembles.
Shostakovich’s trio, on the other hand, is a fascinating experiment in invention. It is a composition in which a single movement embodies the overall structure that was clearly guided by multi-movement predecessors. From a rhetorical point of view, the composer seemed to be relating a narrative without filling in any details about actions or characters. Mind you, the narrative is neither as explicit nor as gut-wrenching as the one around which the Opus 67 (second) trio in E minor was composed in the midst of World War II.
In 1923 Vladimir Lenin’s health was declining at the same time that Joseph Stalin’s influence was rising. However, it was also a time when creative artists still felt that they could pursue the work without worrying about political struggles. Shostakovich’s career had not yet risen, but the Opus 8 trio definitely boosted his reputation for both structural and thematic originality. The trio was followed by his first symphony, which, in turn, led to his first piano sonata and his first full-length opera, The Nose. Neave’s account of this trio admirably captured the sense of a burgeoning talent.
Higdon’s trio is in two movements, both with “color” titles, “Pale Yellow” and “Fiery Red.” One might argue as to whether or not those descriptions were actually realized. However, there is no questioning Higdon’s capacity for inventing and realizing compelling sonorities. Neave had clearly mastered her command of those sonorities and gave them a super-charged interpretation, reminding many of us that Higdon’s compositions deserve more listening experiences.
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