San Francisco Classical Voice

The Eroica Trio was presented by Stanford Lively Arts in an impressive concert at Dinkelspiel Auditorium last Sunday. Winner of the prestigious Naumburg Award in 1991, this trio, of Erika Nickrenz, piano, Adela Peña, violin, and Sara Sant'Ambrogio, cello, played with faultless intonation and an impeccable sense of ensemble that didn't stifle the individual virtuosity of each.

The aesthetic core of their program was Antonin Dvorák's Trio in F Minor, Op. 65. Although this work can't be compared with the most distinguished pieces in the trio repertory, the Eroica played it with the utmost commitment. Dvorák's "folklike" writing in the second and fourth movements, with concise melodies and sharply etched rhythmic outlines, gives the music a focus that the first and third movements lack. The Eroica's delightfully animated playing of the dancelike passages in the final movement served to underline this disparity.

Because there is a natural fullness and large-scale quality to the Eroica's playing, the intimate, quiet moments of the music were even more striking. Cellist Sant'Ambrogio played the first movement's long-breathed second theme in a broadly lyrical manner summoned up by her numerous times during the concert. The many passages where pianist Nickrenz's playing stood out were especially enjoyable. Nickrenz produced the widest tonal palette of the three — from hushed pianissimos and quiet, carefully considered support of her colleagues to sonorous soloistic playing.

The concert began with Anne Dudley's arrangement of the well-known D Minor Chaconne (for violin), BWV. 1004, of Bach. Dudley, who has an active career as a writer of film scores, transformed Bach's slowly evolving set of variations into a pastiche of four-bar-long 19th century clichés that even featured a cadenza for violin and cello that suddenly appeared near the end of the work.

A transcription of music from the past can be a probing musical comment by the composer from a present-day perspective, much like Alfred Schnittke's cadenza to the Beethoven Violin Concerto. It can also take the shape of a more personal version of the original, as in Busoni's solo piano transcription of the Bach Chaconne and Brahms' version for piano-left hand of the same work. Dudley's arrangement for string trio lacked the depth of thought that would make such a piece meaningful.

To end the concert's first half, the trio played Bohuslav Martinu's Cinq pièces brèves (Five Short Pieces). Written in 1930, the music is full of brittle Neoclassical textures and rhythms. Here violinist Peña and cellist Sant'Ambrogio played in an especially incisive manner and with great rhythmic energy. Of particular interest were the final two pieces of the set, where irregular phrase lengths and rhythmic groupings predominated and echoes of jazz could be heard in pianist Nickrenz's excitingly clear staccato playing of the toccata-like passages.

There is no doubt that the Eroica Trio's members are exceptionally fine musicians. Were they to include in their programs works by eminent 20th century composers (Schnittke, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and Walter Zimmermann have all written fascinating works for this instrumental combination), they could continue to offer audiences the pleasures of the traditional repertory while at the same time stimulating them with the delights and challenges of new sounds.

(Thomas Schultz is a pianist and a member of the faculty at Stanford University.)

©2000 Thomas Schultz, all rights reserved