San Francisco Classical Voice

The Korean-born sisters of the Ahn Trio, who performed Thursday evening in the Carriage House at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, are both artistic and social phenomena. The three -- Lucia on piano, Angella on the violin, and Maria on the cello -- seem to relish their almost-unique place in the world of classical music today.

Juilliard trained, they have a unique blend of technical brilliance and artistic personality, as an ensemble and even as individuals. These qualities are invariably conveyed in their programming of little-known or new works and their individualized interpretations of the more standard classics. So it was in this program of Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67, Paul Schoenfield's Four Music Videos, and Dvorak's Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65.

The Shostakovich trio dates to 1944, a doubly depressing year for the Russian people because of the seemingly endless war against both the Nazi barbarians and their own repressive Soviet dictators. The agony and grief of the year are the very sinews of the music, as in some other Shostakovich works of this period. The first notes -- an almost-inaudible, prolonged wail in muted cello harmonics -- are followed by an elegiac section featuring the two string instruments. Before the movement ends the mood has changed to strong, heavily bowed rhythms reminiscent of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, a brutal primitivism that returns in the finale.

After a short Allegro grazioso, the Largo begins with a dirgelike progression of soft dissonances in the piano. Russian Jewish dance music with a Fiddler on the Roof quality in the finale of the trio pointedly draws the country's Jews into the grim wartime tragedy.

These three vivacious young ladies excel in the most wrenching of music. Sixteen months ago at Stanford it was Andrzej Panufnik's Trio No. 1 (composed during the same war, but in Poland) and on Thursday the Shostakovich. The muted and open grief, the relentless scraping of raw nerves, and the pounding tragedy of war on humanity were insinuated and thrust upon the audience by the deep emotional involvement, artistic sensitivity, and technical skills of the three Ahns.

The four-movement Schoenfield was a total contrast, a brilliant romp brilliantly played. Commissioned by the Ahn Trio, it introduced the sisters' fascination for and familiarity with contemporary music of all sorts. The movements, entitled "Rock Song," "Bossa Nova," "Movie Music," and "Samba," were inspired by all of those forms as well as by jazz, cabaret, and Korean and other Latin folk and popular music. The unifying spirit was Charles Ives.

The Dvorak Trio was lovingly played, but almost seemed an afterthought. The ensemble and individual players put an Ahn stamp on the old classic, particularly by caressing some passages more than we generally hear. The one encore, scintillatingly played, was Primavera Portena, by Astor Piazzolla, the Argentine composer of unorthodox tangos who is passionately loved and hated by his fellow countrymen.

Besides being a remarkable artistic ensemble, the Ahns are also a social phenomenon and a boon to the classics. The sisters, whose ages range from 29 to 31, have given a new and often unusually welcoming face to classical music. They frequently give workshops for youngsters. And their bright personalities and appealing styles have attracted many young people to concerts who had seldom or never encountered classical music before. Their Korean appearance doesn't hurt, though in fact they have lived most of their lives in the United States.

In short, the Ahns are a fresh morning breeze wafting into stuffy old concert halls. Both by their performances and their personae they have given classical music a new vitality and relevance for younger (and even older) generations around the world.

(William Ratliff, a Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University, is a former music critic of The Peninsula Times Tribune and a stringer for The Los Angeles Times and Opera News.)

©2000 William Ratliff, all rights reserved