KEY POINTS:
James Gardner's blessed unrest launched the NZ Trio's concert with a blast of good old-fashioned dissonance.
The composer had taken his title from an observation by American dance legend Martha Graham on that very human need for a little bit of dissatisfaction to keep us striving forward.
In Thursday night's concert Gardner's score had Justine Cormack, Ashley Brown and Sarah Watkins do a good deal more than strive - his music vaulted, jolted and stormed in searing waves.
Watkins in particular had almost superhuman demands made on her with quickfire tricky chords.
It was exciting stuff and we were rewarded with blessed rest in the last few pages, an impressionist web of timbres, finely drawn out by the musicians.
This was a hard act to follow and, alas, Beethoven's Kakadu Variations which followed seemed a mite well-mannered and under-characterised. It was the trio's other commission, John Psathas' Helix, that restored adrenalin to the first half of the concert.
Psathas' programme notes don't give much away these days, but Helix found his trademark hyper-energy slightly muted.
The first movement was a snake-charmer of a piece as Cormack and Brown hypnotised us with winding, unerring octave playing.
The second movement, mysteriously titled the biggest nothing of them all, deployed the same technique, but in gentler mode, over buoyant piano riffs.
The Finale was old-style Psathas, a regular Goosebump City.
This was a Tarantella with enough sting in its bars to ward off the poison of a thousand tarantulas.
Mendelssohn's C minor Trio is not the most memorable work in the 19th century repertoire but its exquisitely crafted first movement revealed a lovely sense of accord between the players, with particularly shapely phrasing from Brown.
The third movement also went extremely well, forward in tone and insistent in energy, although not well enough to compensate for the composer's drab singsong second movement or a rather laboured Finale, complete with a plodding chorale workout.
