A Delightful Piano Trio Debut From SFP

Last night in Herbst Theatre the Great Artists and Ensembles Series of San Francisco Performances (SFP) presented the San Francisco debut of a piano trio whose members are violinist Nicola Benedetti, cellist Leonard Elschenbroich, and pianist Alexei Grynyuk. All three of these musicians have established themselves as soloists; and Benedetti made her debut with the San Francisco Symphony on December 31, 2011, following up with a subscription performance of Max Bruch’s Opus 26 (first) violin concerto in G minor in March of 2017. The other two musicians were probably visiting San Francisco for the first time (at least as professional performers). My personal (unqualified) opinion is that, if they decide to continue performing as a trio, they should consider coming up with a shorter name for the entire group!

Their program consisted of only two familiar piano trios, one from either end of the nineteenth century, performed in chronological order. They began with Franz Schubert’s D. 929 trio in E-flat major, and the intermission was followed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 50 trio in A minor. Both of these compositions have received generous exposure from any number of trio ensembles, not to mention an impressive legacy of recordings. Regardless of familiarity, however, the last night’s performance brought freshness of interpretation to both of the selections.

What was most significant in both of the selections was the acute awareness that each musician had of the other two. Both Schubert and Tchaikovsky explored any number of ways in which thematic material was developed through distinctively individual “voices,” all possible pairings, and the ensemble as a whole. Those of us that have followed chamber music for some time know that there have been any number of occasions in which a piano trio is performed with the tacit assumption that the pianist acts as the “conductor.” (All names will be withheld to avoid getting into any arguments, but at least one of those pianists used to make frequent visits to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music!) Last night, on the other hand, the performance came across as more “democratic,” letting the “marks on paper” establish the circulation of leadership among all three trio members.

Let us hope that these three musicians will continue to allocate time for further exploration of the piano trio repertoire and that they will be able to return to San Francisco to present us with the results of those explorations.