Poulenc Trio. July 8, 2018.

Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University.  Balcony (free).

Program

Suite in the Old Style (arr. M. Krutik) by Schnittke (1934-1998).

Trains of Thought (2012) by Viet Cuong (b. 1990).

Romance, op. 97a (arr. Anatoly Trofinov) by Shostakovich (1906-1975).

A Spin Through Mosco (arr. Trofimov) by Shostakovich.

Fantasie concertante sur des themes de “I’Italian in Algeri” (arr. Charles Triebert & Eugene Jancourt) by Rossini (1792-1878).

Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano (1926) by Poulenc (1899-1963).

Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano iii. Jaunty by Previn (b. 1929).

Artists

James Austin Smith, oboe; Bryan Young, bassoon; Irina Kaplan, piano.

This was an interesting concert, with interesting stories behind several of the pieces.  Of course the combination of instruments is not common for a trio, which probably accounts for the claim that the trio “is the most active touring piano-wind chamber music ensemble in the world.”  Competition for that title is probably light, and there is every reason to believe this trio is welcomed all over the world.

Alfred Schnittke’s piece “Concerto Gross No. 5 for the Violin” is the first song (alphabetically) on my iPod, so I have listened to it many times – at least the beginning part as I usually would skip to what I wanted to listen.  The suite performed today had nothing in common, except perhaps for the rather “minimalist” approach.  Schnittke wrote in a classical (or even baroque) style.  It was a pleasant composition of five movements: pastorale, balletto, minuetto, fuga, and pantomime. The first four movements sounded exactly like their descriptions.  I didn’t know what to except of the pantomime, so was happy to ride along.  It ended with a flourish.

The second piece was composed by a young composer (he was around 22 when he wrote it).  On top of that, there was an accompanying video that was projected onto the screen when the music was performed.  Both Cuong and the animator Elizabeth Phelps made a brief remark about the work.  Cuong described the music reflected how a day-dreamer’s thoughts might move from one subject to another (“scattered brain” was a phrase he used), and when he returned to his original thought he was informed by the intervening thinking.  Phelps described her animation technique as mostly using tweezers to move objects around, and the process took nine months.

Elizabeth Phelps and Viet Cuong talked about the piece "Trains of Thought."

The music was interesting enough, so was the animation.  I unfortunately don’t have the bandwidth to process so much information simultaneously, and didn’t have time to really listen to or analyze the music while trying to grasp what was happening on screen.  The “story” was mostly about being carried away by birds in flight, and indeed the scene at the end was similar to what we saw at the beginning.  At more than 15 minutes, though, the screen play got a bit monotonous, and – by implication – the music also.  While people definitely day-dream for long periods of time, perhaps we may not find other people’s day-dreams that interesting?

My overall impression of the music was quite positive.  This naturally was my first encounter with Cuong, but I won’t be surprised if I will hear more from him in the future.  The Trio’s website has a YouTube video of the piece.  The duration was about 12:30 minutes, so it felt longer …

The first half concluded with two pieces by Shostakovich, arranged for the Trio’s instruments.

I saw the light-hearted “An Italian in Algiers” at the Sydney Opera House a few years ago, so was looking forward to hearing the “fantasie concertante” arranged by a couple of Paris Conservatory reed players.  The piece had several of the familiar themes from the opera woven into it; despite that, it didn’t sound as light-hearted as I remembered of the opera.

The Trio written by Poulenc was an example of the many chamber music works he wrote for wind instruments, and was the reason the Trio adopted its name – according to Smith.  The three movements are quite traditional: presto, andante, and rondo.

Smith joked that there is a “reed convention” every now and then, with hundreds of participants, and it was during one of those events that Andre Previn introduced his Trio.  We heard one of the movements today.

The audience was appreciative of the musicians.

We were happy that we could sit through such a concert, and I certainly got a new appreciation of how difficult these reed instruments could be (not that I ever had any doubt.)  One problem is the bassoon, especially when bellowing out low notes, is not as easy to pick up as the oboe or the piano, and I often had to consciously listen for it. The other issue was most of the attention was paid to the winds, and the pianist was mostly ignored – Smith did say there were 15x more notes played the piano, slight exaggeration.

Our second Princeton Summer Chamber concert was at 3 pm Sunday afternoon.  Melissa Bohl, the artistic director, mentioned this time slot allowed a different group of people to attend.  We did see some young children.  We stopped by Buffalo Wild Wings for an early dinner on the way back.