For its second program of the season, the Chamber Music Society of Salt Lake City brought back the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio Thursday for a delightful evening at the University of Utah.
The group itself is something of a chamber-music ideal, a well-meshed threesome each of whose members nonetheless communicates an individual point of view. Thursday those were brought to bear on piano trios of Haydn, Dvorak and Frank Martin, with especially memorable results in the case of the Dvorak, his Op. 65 Trio in F minor.Dating from 1883, the piece came at a time of both personal and artistic crisis for the composer, emerging as perhaps the most Brahmsian of all his chamber works. In scale it approaches that of the symphonies, in mood and harmonic language the more somber of the German composer's masterpieces. Still, in its artful balancing of the inward and the outward, it speaks with a distinctively Dvorakian passion, and here that was very much to the fore.
Thus the opening Allegro was set forth with both strength and sensitivity, its air of tragic involvement as apparent in the ruminative bridges as in the more turbulent outbursts. Nor was passion far beneath the surface in the second-movement Allegretto, here lighter and more fanciful, even if the speedy tempo did slight the grazioso marking a bit.
Even in the quiet central section the feeling registered, as it did in the slow movement, the lemony sweetness of Mark Kaplan's violin contrasting effectively with the restrained soulfulness of Colin Carr's cello. At the same time, even on long stick David Golub's piano never overbalanced his partners, either here or in the vibrantly sprung Bohemian finale, in which he was clearly the anchor.
Earlier these artists brought no less vitality to Haydn's Trio in C major, H. XV: 27. Here the trick is not to let the piano dominate writing that is clearly skewed in its favor. (The piece was in fact published as one of three "Sonatas for the Pianoforte with accompaniment for violin and violoncello.")
That was achieved by way of a bright, highly musical blend in which the main ideas, although flowing primarily from the keyboard, seemed to be picked up on by the others. Thus one admired the skittish interplay between Kaplan and Golub even at the superfast tempo they set for themselves in the Presto finale, which more than lived up to its name.
That was followed by Martin's Trio on Popular Irish Melodies, written in 1925 during the Swiss composer's Parisian residency. The result is an appealing mix of the Gaelic and the Gallic, the familiarity of the Irish themes being occasionally undercut by some post-impressionist harmonies.
Here it profited from an animated reading in which even the cello danced, though Carr's playing was arguably at its most moving in the semi-mournful Adagio. It was Kaplan who called the tune in the Irish-fiddler finale, however, here almost equal parts jig and gigue.
The French influence returned by way of the encore, a rarefied account of the third movement from Debussy's long-unpublished Trio in G major. Here of course the impressionism was undiluted, especially on Golub's part. Again, though, the three voices spoke as one, even if they were distinguishable.
Upcoming concerts on this series will feature the Orion Quartet (Jan. 12), the Quartet Sine Nomine of Lausanne (Feb. 9) and the Emerson Quartet (April 20).