The Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke wrote his Piano Trio to commemorate Alban Berg's 100th birthday in 1985, and I'd wager that Berg would have liked the piece.
The score is heavy, romantic and often frantic, but it's also underpinned with careful process and shot through with moments of quiet clarity. Stylistically it's all over the place – Schnitkke called his approach 'polystylism' – and darkly, thrillingly volatile. In this performance from Daniel's Beard (pianist Aaron Shorr, cellist Tom Rathbone, violinist Alastair Savage), its expressive language sounded straight from the heart.
This was candid playing, unafraid to drive home the work's insistent dissonances and unhurried enough to pause at its rays of respite. Halfway through the first movement Shorr articulated a simple chorale with tender concision; elsewhere, when the cello is left hanging alone with an introspective motif, Rathbone's tone was touchingly vulnerable. The trio lost a little direction towards the end of the closing Adagio, but still: a powerful, persuasive rendition.
The other work in their hour-long Cottiers Chamber Project concert was Brahms's First Piano Trio. This is early Brahms – his Opus 8, published when he was 21 – and the Beards fell into the trap of overloading its unbridled, big-boned lyricism. The string players' vibrato intensified and their intonation strayed in the faster movements, but the opening of the Adagio was arrestingly understated and the first movement's recapitulation – a Brahms recapitulation is a majestic thing; nobody sinks back into the principal theme quite like he does – was navigated with grace and gravitas.
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