Ensemble of bright sparks

It's the cover image of Gretchen Albrecht's lithograph Core that is most likely to catch your eye if you see the New Zealand Trio's Spark album in your record store.

Once again, Wellington's Trust Records have the knack of finding just the right piece of local art to complement the music on a CD.

Listen to the coruscating textures of John Psathas' first Island Song and you may well imagine Albrecht's hypnotic reds pulsating in sympathy.

The NZ Trio has commissioned widely and shrewdly, and this collection benefits from that, even if the two major pieces here have been picked up from the Ogen Trio's repertoire.

These six composers featured show the range of New Zealand music out there, and show us the different approaches possible in writing for an ensemble of violin, cello and piano.

Island Songs, from 1995, is the oldest offering, two pieces of merciless propulsion surrounding a fragile take on the Greek zeibekiko dance, its many emotions and textures beautifully graduated.

Victoria Kelly's Sono - with sliding, reverberant soundscapes and dynamic shock tactics - takes brilliant advantage of the stereo spectrum, as does the downtown funk of Michael Norris' Dirty Pixels, the spacious recording adding a tight focus.

Maria Grenfell's A Feather of Blue, responding to a Kevin Ireland poem, flutters towards the impressionistic. Penelope Axten's For Violin, Violoncello, and Piano is more abstract and colouristic, running the gamut from subdued to savage.

The collection ends with a hyper-energetic performance of the nearest thing on the disc to a traditional trio, Gareth Farr's four-movement Ahi. Disarmingly tuneful, with the sort of rhythmic lift that the Wellington composer has put his stamp on, this is immediate in the most life-enhancing sense of the word.

All in all, Justine Cormack, Ashley Brown and Sarah Watkins have come up with a most attractive package, and the first to gather together New Zealand music for their medium.

With its generous 74 minutes of music and Trust Records' usual exemplary attention to technical matters, it easily falls into the category of obligatory purchases.

* The New Zealand Trio, Spark (Trust Records MMT 2066)