New Zealand Trio at the Auckland University Music Theatre

Reviewed by WILLIAM DART

The New Zealand Trio's concert on Sunday to celebrate the ensemble's new residency at the University of Auckland attracted a capacity audience and left them more than satisfied.

With playing of this stature, Justine Cormack (violin), Ashley Brown (cello) and Sarah Watkins (piano) are set to become a force on the national music scene.

It was the sort of programme dreams are made of, with two New Zealand works and a pair of mainstream offerings that bypassed the expected Central European masters.

Arensky's D minor Trio started cautiously. However, once a dialogue had been set up between Cormack and Brown, a fire was ignited which carried the musicians through the piece, a little awkwardness in the scherzo aside.

Brown's sheer emotional intensity in the Elegia third movement took the work to an altogether higher level.

At the other end of the evening, Chausson's G minor Trio gave a taste of what Wagner might have come up with had he tried his hand at a piano trio. Perhaps Chausson lays on the exotic harmonies a little too heavily and the finale - which spends far too many notes saying far too little - is a distinct liability.

Earlier, the Vite scherzo was a gem, with the players beautifully attuned to the composer's obsession with differing phrase lengths.

Watkins' keyboard fluency was to the fore throughout, especially in the opening movement, providing a backdrop for thrilling string playing.

Maria Grenfell's A Feather of Blue, a finely tinctured response to a phrase from poet Kevin Ireland, pitted string harmonics against dark piano sonorities in a way that made me think of the dark, lonely sound that producer Mitchell Froom brings to the music of the Finns.

Michael Norris' newly commissioned dirty pixels was predictably a startler, transferring the virtuosity of his orchestral pieces into the chamber music arena. The score may look fiendish on paper, but in rendition it was hard-firing bop brought to life in a performance that was a miracle of synergy and synchronicity, totally illuminated by the musicians' utter involvement.

More please.