Trio plays up image and intensity
The warm winds of two storms swept Boston on Sunday afternoon: the long tail of Hurricane Kyle, and the Eroica Trio. The latter was giving the second of two Sunday concerts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - and carrying many in the audience along as helplessly as any skiff in a storm.
The Eroica Trio is famous for its intensity, lively commissions, freshly programmed CDs, and of course, personal beauty. Coifed, wrapped, and décolleté, their presence is very much part of their marketing image. Some might think it connected to a slight self-consciousness on stage. To me, it seems, well, de trop. I wished they'd just come out in jeans, and gotten on with it.
They really are wonderful musicians. They proved that once again in these, their first public appearances in Boston since the Australian-born Susie Park joined as violinist two years ago. The trio is preparing to do some innovative things - in October, they will follow cellist Matt Haimovitz's path; breaking onto the club scene, playing American music on electric instruments. Sunday's concert showed its skill in golden standards by Mozart (G-major, K 564), Schubert (No. 2, in E-flat Major), and an arrangement (by Park) of Fritz Kreisler's violin solo, "Liebesfreud," in between.
They play well and phrase naturally together. Park already seems a comfortable partner if not as alert to shifts of emphasis as the other two. Attacks were crisp. The variations movement of the Mozart was lovely. It was a humid day, and the piano seemed sticky, which may explain why Erika Nickrenz played with a slightly aggressive pointedness. On her warm-toned 1715 Matteo Goffriller instrument, cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio played the theme of the third movement in the Schubert with a beautiful line.
If the trio fell short on anything, it was an elegant finish at the end of phrases in the Mozart, and an easy give-and-take in Schubert's delicious languors. (Compare the Beaux Arts Trio's version at their Tanglewood farewell, preserved on NPR's website, for ways of stretching the tempos and varying accents and textures.) The Eroica gives a lot of pleasure, but there are riches yet to discover - beneath the surface. 