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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
Gryphon Trio
January 10, 2007
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Bulletproof Troupe By Scott MacClelland
At last, Canada’s Gryphon met the Stanford Cardinal on the field of honor. After numerous tours in the U.S. and overseas, the Gryphon Piano Trio warmed up Dinkelspiel Auditorium on a cold night last week, where they introduced themselves and the domestic premiere of Tears in Your Hand by Stanford composer Jonathan Berger.
The Gryphon Trio boasts a rock-solid foundation in pianist Jamie Parker, the smoothly assured violin playing of Annalee Patipatanakoon, and the eager enthusiasm of cellist Roman Borys. These three facets of one colorfully refracting gem convey individuality as much as ensemble, a particular pleasure compared to those trios where one personality palpably dominates. Founded in 1993, they perform in residence with Music Toronto and teach at the University of Toronto.
The Gryphon Trio So exacting and detailed was their opening, Haydn’s Trio in C, Hob. XV:27, that it sounded like a recording audition. This is the kind of high-definition playing that chamber ensembles who feel they haven’t yet “arrived” strive to maintain. Such a performance certainly makes a vivid impression, even at the risk of packing the attentive ear with a myriad of performance details. It even masked the subordinate roles of the strings in relation to what otherwise would serve perfectly well as a keyboard sonata (as its first publication title made plain). On that point, Parker sparkled. He displayed a keen dynamic sensitivity to his partners, as well as to the room itself, which he maintained throughout the evening. Following the reading — carried out with such high polish that I imagined these players had committed it to memory — Parker noted that the Haydn was more than 200 years old, while final revisions to the next piece were only two hours old. Composer Berger then spoke briefly, explaining that he had “fractured” the Yiddish song of its inspiration, Unter Dyne Vyse Shetern (Under the White Stars) without knowing exactly where it was going. The song was written in 1943 in the Vilna Ghetto by Abraham Sutsever and haunts Berger’s piece as “ghostly, distorted fragments” throughout its 12 minutes. The piece, with its various outbursts and extensive string harmonics, held together by recurring mottos and rhetorical gestures, offers considerable variety and rich scoring. This was one of two dozen Gryphon commissions so far, and it got a performance that was both confident and convincing.
No doubt many in the large audience arrived with high expectations of Schubert’s grand Trio in B flat, D898, with its architecture built for the ages and a basketful of sing-along tunes. After hearing the Schubert in close proximity to the Haydn, it seems impossible that these two composers lived and worked in the same place at the same time. (Of course, in the 30 years between the two works an earthquake called Beethoven changed everything.) In the Schubert, the three instruments are on fairly equal footing — the composer makes sure they all get their moments to shine — and you can glimpse the dramatic flair and symphonic power heard with abundance in the last string quartets and the final Quintet in C. The audience response began with cheers. On the second curtain call, the Gryphons offered a sensuous account of that minor Astor Piazzolla masterpiece, Oblivion. They were also pedaling their newest CD on the Analekta label, the complete piano trios by Mozart.
(Since 1978, Scott MacClelland has written music criticism and journalism for all the major newspapers on the Monterey Peninsula, and for the Metro papers in Santa Cruz and San Jose. During the same period, he has taught music history for Monterey Peninsula College. In recent years he has contributed articles to Strings magazine.)
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