Performance: The Tasman Trio

School of Music

Reviewer: Heath Lees


This is not the "old" Tasman Trio, but a new line-up, with Miranda Adams now the violinist and cellist Tom Pierard replacing Euan Murdoch.

The common anchor in the middle of this sea of change is John Wells, pianist, composer and presenter, and it was his own recently completed Piano Trio that provided the centrepiece for Monday evening's genial but sparsely attended concert.

Wells maintains that his music should sound a little out of the European mainstream on account of its Maori influences.

He illustrated this by pointing out a particular scale and a paatare rhythm which underpins the third movement.

Unfortunately, it proved virtually impossible to locate specifically New Zealand or Maori contexts in the music.

But this is not to say that the work fell short as an entertaining or absorbing piece.

On the contrary, the different, very assured textures and effects made considerable impact.

This was particularly so in the faster movements, where Wells set intriguing musical patterns in energetic motion, and bounded from key to key, at all times displaying his tonal heart firmly upon his fast-moving sleeve, while happily demonstrating the proof of Schoenberg's dictum that there is plenty of fine music still to be written in C-major.

The performers clearly enjoyed this piece.

This was a relief since the opening Mozart Trio (K.548) had suffered from a lack of cohesion and rough edges to the tone and phrasing.

Adams found the intonation and articulation at speed difficult to manage.

And Pierard's notes were steady as a rock but lacked the essential elements of shaping and shading.

In the second half, the Brahms C-Minor Trio Op 101 again highlighted the separateness of each player rather than the smooth unity of an ensemble.

The cross-rhythms of the second movement never managed to gel, but the slow movement was expressive, and the finale sonorous, showing some fire in the belly by the end.