Florestan Trio at the Town Hall

By TARA WERNER

AUCKLAND TOWN HALL - Was it a case in this concert on Saturday night that the music itself was aloof, or the players?

Susan Tomes, the pianist from the London-based Florestan Trio, mentioned in her introduction to Gabriel Faure's Piano Trio in D minor that in this late work he simplified his style to the point of being enigmatic.

It was certainly the way she and fellow musicians, violinist Anthony Marwood and cellist Richard Lester performed this austere piece, written only two years before the composer's death in 1924.

Expressive, yes and wonderfully coordinated. And yet this interpretation was cool, even detached throughout all three movements.

Likewise Ravel's carefully constructed Sonata for Violin and Cello, brilliantly written for both instruments. Given the limitation - some would say challenge - of a duo, his ability to evoke an almost orchestral palate was clear, even though he himself thought of it as a "machine for two instruments".

Yet, even though this interpretation by Marwood and Lester was technically proficient, it lacked essential expressiveness and was again rather impassive.

Only with Schubert and Beethoven did the trio allow itself to break through this glass barrier and fully express the music. Even so, Schubert's early attempt at piano trio writing, an allegro written when he was 15, was not much of a vehicle for emotional depth.

At last, with Beethoven's Piano Trio in E flat, the alchemy seemed to be right - that mix of technique, emotional depth and rapport which are the essential ingredients of any well-balanced interpretation.