The Vienna Piano Trio at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

The Vienna Piano Trio opened its Auckland concert with a delightful Schubert Allegro, written just after young Franz's voice had broken.

The jovial Haydn seems to smile over the boy's shoulder in this work, because Schubert gleefully takes his inspiration from the opening of one of the older man's piano sonatas. The zest of youth informs every bar.

The trio brought it off with the sort of knife-edge playing made in chamber music heaven. The two string players revelled in their offbeat jabs and surges and Stefan Mendl relished his rippling passage-work.

Edward Steuermann's transcription of Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht is fast becoming standard repertoire, and the Vienna Piano Trio's consummate performance of the piece revealed why. Although the utter rapture of a string orchestra's chromatic swoops and swoons is not possible, three players can emphasise the more linear aspects, and the pleading dialogue between violin and cello perfectly evokes the spirit of the Dehmel poem that inspired Schoenberg.

The Austrians gave us thrilling climaxes and flexible tempi that harnessed the breath of life itself.

One of many magical moments was when Matthias Gredler's cello burst into magnificent song in the central adagio, although the carefully nurtured atmosphere was threatened when some keys were clangorously dropped in the silence before the final ethereal chord.

It was a laudable initiative from Chamber Music New Zealand to ask its visitors to include a local work, although the colours of Maria Grenfell's A Feather of Blue were not as vividly caught as they were when the New Zealand Trio tackled it a few months ago in the more intimate venue of the University Music Theatre.

Beethoven's Archduke Trio found the three musicians at their peak.

From the opening phrase it was evident that these men take infinitesimal care in realising a composer's intentions.

The scherzo was riveting, the bite of bows on strings giving it an earthy propulsion; and there was more dancing in the finale once the strings followed Mendl's lead in a sonorous andante.

As an encore, the exquisite Poco Adagio from Dvorak's Opus 65 made me wish I had been in the Wellington audience when they played the complete work.