San Francisco Classical Voice

CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW

Three Winners

April 27, 2004

Jupiter Trio

By David A. Lawrence

This is a story of local kids who made good. The Jupiter Trio was co-founded in 1999 by Aglika Angelova (piano) and Robert Waters (violin), who then recruited Julian Hersh as their 'cellist. Their concertizing over the next several years was focused on the Bay Area, but in 2002 they entered the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and came back with first place honors — the only American ensemble ever to do so. In addition to their gold medals, they received an extensive concert tour of Japan as part of their prize. Their debut CD, containing works by Beethoven and Shostakovich, is about to be released (on the Bridge Records label), but has already earned them The Classical Recording Foundation's 2004 Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artist Award. All in all it's been quite a dizzying ride for these three extraordinary musicians.

Their talents were on display Tuesday in The Florence Gould Theatre at The Legion of Honor in a program of trios by Beethoven (Opus 1, #1), Ives and Mendelssohn. The first thing you notice about the Jupiter is the quality of the ensemble playing. It's a cliché to say that chamber musicians played "as one," but in this instance it's valid. Their sensitivity to one another is breathtaking, particularly in the kind of music in which motives are tossed back and forth like a game of catch. Then there's the issue of the care given over to interpretive ideas. They are all three formidable intellects, so I have no doubt that the highly-evolved expressive gestures in their performances are achieved through prolonged and delicate rehearsal diplomacy. In any case, the net effect is pristine musicianship married to dazzling energy.

Beethoven wrote the three trios of his Opus 1 to impress Haydn, and he probably overshot the mark a little. My guess is that the older composer was, if anything, somewhat frightened by the young man's precocity. Of course Beethoven had already written numerous youthful works at this point, but the extent of his mastery at such a young age is still very impressive. Even the greatest musical architects, like Brahms, betray a certain amount of immaturity in their early compositions. But in this set of trios, Beethoven is already fully in command of his craft. Since the c minor Trio (#3) is the most popular of the three, it's easy to forget how substantial the other two are. The Eb-Major Trio that the Jupiter played possesses, among other things, one of those hugely-passionate large-scale slow movements that characterize Beethoven's important compositions throughout his life.

Definitive conception

It would be hard to imagine a more convincing performance of the work than the one this ensemble gave. From the very first note, the quality of sound production and the richness and thoughtfulness of interpretive expression made it a magical musical event. The crowd stood and cheered for a rarely-played early Beethoven trio. That caught me by surprise; I had expected the famous Mendelssohn d-minor Trio to be the show-stopper on this program.

The Trio by Charles Ives is a subject unto itself. Written in 1904, with some revisions in 1911, it contains virtually every idea that came to dominate 20th-century music. There are tone rows, tone clusters, collage architecture, some improvisatory leeway for the players, absolutely ferocious polymetric and polytonal complexity, Ives' own idiosyncratic dissonant vocabulary, and an anticipation of much harmonic language of later composers like Bartók and Varèse. Even the jokes are serious, in the sense that they are so multi-faceted. An example of this would be that, from time to time, each player will detach himself from the ensemble, going off to play his own music in his own meter. Sometimes they blend back in again, and other times they simply jump back in as if nothing had ever gone wrong. It's a little meta-commentary on the nature of chamber music.

Of course there are also the typical Ivesian references to folk materials. In his scholarly edition of the work, John Kirkpatrick counts 28 of them in the middle movement alone, each handled in a different manner, from burlesque up through canonic imitation. But this piece transcends the caricature of Ives the rogue and prankster. The final movement, in particular, is moody, elevated and sobering. It's a substantial undertaking in every respect, not least of all for the performers. Studying the score, I wondered why it has seemed so necessary for so much 20th-century composition to strive to be more-modern-than-thou, cleansing our palettes of any residual Romantic sentimentality still one more time with an onslaught of minor ninths. Ives had explored that territory in a very robust manner in 1904, a century ago. He was not just the eccentric he is usually taken to be — he also, in a sense, embodied and even culminated certain aspects of modernism.

By intermission, the Jupiter Trio had already presented their audience with a pristine and gorgeous Beethoven, and a rich and deeply-moving modern masterpiece; it felt like a full meal. As it happens, they also served up a superb performance of the Mendelssohn trio for dessert. It's a completely delightful piece, but on the way home I found myself immersed in thought about the great innovators — Beethoven and Ives — each opening the door to a new musical language.