Special trio finds a special audience

The Eggner Trio (from left) brothers Georg, Florian and Christoph. Photo / Supplied

With the Eggner Trio about to embark on its third Chamber Music New Zealand tour, I finally have the pleasure of meeting the third brother of the Austrian group, violinist Georg.

On previous visits, Christoph and Florian have charmed me with recollections of their earliest chamber music endeavours.

Georg remembers being "given some Haydn scores by a very old woman in our home village. The paper was yellow and the printing was very old-fashioned - not like we have today. It was a very big thing, though, a little bit like opening the Bible."

He laughs heartily when I suggest he and his brothers must be rather familiar with our corner of the world, after the numerous visits that have followed the trio's 2003 victory in the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition.

"Australian and New Zealand audiences have a special way of listening," he says. "They listen so intently to what we are playing, what they are being presented with."

On one occasion, a switched-on Melbourne audience made it clear the brothers were no longer in Vienna. "We were playing a piece by Werner Pirchner, full of humour, with jokes that are instantly recognised in Austria or Germany," Georg Eggner recalls. "In Melbourne they laughed too, but at different places, and this was very interesting."

All the brothers do solo work, but for Georg, the trio comes first. He is easily drawn out on the great groups that have gone before them - the Beaux Arts, the Trio de Trieste and his favourite, the Vienna Schubert Trio, which disbanded in 1993 after less than a decade of music-making.

"There could be more of us," he says. "The trio repertoire is so fantastic."

The Eggners have brought a special programme with them and next Friday's concert sets off down Argentina way with Piazzolla's Four Seasons in its trio arrangement by Jose Bragato.

"This is very different from what Gidon Kremer does with the work. There's none of Kremer's Vivaldi quotation and the arrangement tries to get back to the real roots of tango.

"This dance was not, at first, such a noble music," he adds, explaining how the tango was born in the red-light districts of Buenos Aires.

Ian Munro's Tales of Old Russia was commissioned three years ago by Christchurch entrepreneur Christopher Marshall, and premiered by Munro, Wilma Smith and David Berlin.

Eggner outlines what we might expect in the Australian composer's takes on three Russian fairy tales. Vassilisa and the Baba Yaga is "brutal, with some terrifying details like the children being eaten by the witch" while in The Snow Maiden "you'll hear the snow maiden disappear as she jumps over the fire".

He confides also that he and his brothers "have decided to do a couple of things additional to what the composer has written, making a kind of extension to the piece".

More details are not forthcoming. Suffice it to say, he adds with a smile, "in the third movement we will not be playing only our instruments".

On previous visits the Eggner brothers ended their concerts with the grandeur of Beethoven and Brahms. This time, Aucklanders will be given Saint-Saens' rarely heard E minor Trio. But, for all the work's Gallic style, Saint-Saens still writes music of substance.

"It begins and ends almost symphonically. But in between there's this dancing landler that could have come from Austria. It makes such a great adventure of it."

Performance

What: Eggner Trio

Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Friday at 8pmThe Eggner Trio - (from left) brothers Georg, Florian and Christoph.