The New Zealand Trio at University Music Theatre

The New Zealand Trio, returning to Auckland after two weeks of touring, brought us a programme with a difference. The evening had a chronological ploy - five 20th-century works, working backwards through time. The bill ran from a Chris Cree Brown score, only months old, to Ravel's 1914 Piano Trio

Brown's The Triumvirate, the latest in a series of commissions by the group, is described by its composer as an argument in music. Its main sections are in coruscating toccata-style, even more so when the argument returns for a second innings.

If a more reflective idea, coloured with harmonics, didn't register quite so securely, the three musicians certainly dealt out crisp justice to the more extrovert writing.

To hear Michael Norris' dirty pixels again was like visiting an old friend.

It has captivated me twice in concert and is a much-played track on the Trio's debut CD. While lacking none of their previous virtuosity, Justine Cormack, Ashley Brown and Sarah Watkins seemed to make more of Norris' space-filled moments.

Before playing Schnittke's Piano Trio, Brown urged the audience to search out more music by the Russian composer.

After the persuasive performance that followed, turning each and every "Happy Birthday" quotation into its own, emotionally charged cadence point, I'm sure they will.

The Trio has a special sympathy for the composer, catching his sometimes uneasy balance of stoic purity and harmonic richness.

Arvo Part's lightish Mozart-Adagio opened the second half. Last year it was an encore, now, in Mozart's big year, it has new significance. On both occasions, it amused and mystified.

Ravel's Trio, although delivered with gusto, was an interpretation in progress. Not all the first movement's outbursts caught the group aware, and there were balance problems, particularly with Cormack's violin. In the Pantoum movement, melodies which should have stolen on our consciousness, simply arrived.

The most beautiful playing came in the Passacaille, despite some gruff sounds in the lower register of the Steinway.

The group stayed on the French side for an encore with an arrangement of Debussy's La fille aux cheveux de lin, a quaint, if classy, nod to palm court days.