Prima Trio. June 28, 2016.

Richardson Auditorium, Princeton.  Balcony Center.

Members: Anatasia Dedik, piano; Gulia Gurevich, violin & viola; Boris Allakhverdyan, clarinet.

Program

Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, E flat, K. 498 “Kegelstatt” by Mozart (1756-1791).

Suite for Clarinet, Violin and Piano, Op. 157b by Darius Milhaud (1892-1974).

The Klezmer’s Wedding by Srul Irving Glick (1934-2002).

Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano by Khachaturian (1903-1978).

Otono Porteno (from Cuatro estachones portenas) byPiazzolla (1921-1992).

Serenade for Three by Schickele (b. 1935).

I was under the impression that there would be several pieces where the string instrument would be the viola, it turns out only piece that fit the bill was the Mozart piece.  Given Mozart's affinity for the viola and the clarinet, it is quite natural he would compose a piece for those instruments.

David explained to me “Kegelstatt” was a bowling game popular during Mozart’s time.  The three movements are Andante, Menuett, and Allegro.  As usual, I had some trouble picking out the viola part even though there were only two other instruments.  In any case, there was much interplay among the three players, and they did quite well.

Milhaud was born in France, but spent a lot of time in California writing music for movies.  The Suite was based on incidental music he wrote for a play “The Traveller without Luggage.”  When I looked up his Wikipedia entry, he had a long list of students, including Philip Glass and Peter Schickele, whose music was also on today’s program.

The movements of the Suite are Ouverture, Divertissement, Jeu, and Introduction et Final.

Per one of the musicians, Glick was also one of Milhaud’s students (confirmed by his Wiki entry.)  Klezmer’s Wedding is a lively dance that has a heavy dose of Jewish melodies.  To me it could easily have been lifted from the musical The Fiddler on the Roof.

The Khachaturian trio was how this group got together in 2004, while all were students at Oberlin College.  Khachaturian was an Armenian living in St. Petersburg – the clarinetist is Armenian (born in Azerbaijan to American parents), and the pianist is from St. Petersburg.  The trio contains reference to Uzbek melodies, the country the string player hails from.  From that start they have since built up quite a repertoire and record at various competitions.  I probably know more than one piece by this composer, but I think “sabre dance” when the name Khachaturian is mentioned; and this trio is nothing like that.

We just heard Winter and Spring by Piazzolla at the New York Phil Snug Harbor concert, today we got to hear Autumn.  Today’s arrangement is for three instruments.  I got the fast-slow-fast structure of the piece, but didn’t get any reference to Vivaldi’s work.

We heard of Schickele during our college days, what I remember was he wrote “funny” music, often for an electric keyboard.  That may or may not be correct.  What I heard today was quite serious.

The group did a short encore afterwards, making this a rather long program. The players took turn to say something about the piece that was about to be played.  I thought when playing the violin the musician was often a bit off; I wonder if switching between two instruments, with the different stop distances, may affect the muscle memory a little bit.  I did appreciate how well each of them played, and how well they worked together.  While many of the pieces can be considered contemporary or even modern, they all sounded quite melodious and relatively easy to get.

We got to Princeton early and had a leisurely dinner with David and Vivien.  It was good to have some time to catch up, even though we do see each other quite often.