If you run with big guys like Brahms and Shostakovich, you better have professional gear.
The Red Shoe Piano Trio did just that Sunday in Roshong Recital Hall. A little after 3 p.m., violinist M. Brent Williams, cellist Katherine Jetter and pianist Lisa Campi confidently strolled on stage wearing concert black, looking for all the world like serious musicians.
Their red sneakers sent a different signal. A little whimsy never hurts.
Campi and Jetter sported shiny sequins. Williams wore red canvas but added black-and-white striped socks.
Jaunty touches aside, the only resident chamber ensemble in town delivered a very serious program full of power and passion. No lilting Strauss waltz. No light-hearted Broadway transcription. Instead, the trio opened with Bohuslav Martinu’s “Andantino,” one of five sections from his “Bergerettes.” Composed in 1939, the work was written by the Czech composer to “protest the Nazi menace,” Jetter told the audience.
Over five compelling minutes, the trio unspooled an eerie lullaby with a slow and tuneful opening and closing section interrupted by a fast, almost frenzied center. It set the tone for a darkly energetic recital featuring works by two musical giants.
Shostakovich’s “Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 67” was composed in 1944, and it, too, shared some of the darkness of Martinu’s “Andantino.”
In a brief introduction, Jetter said the Shostakovich was essentially an elegy for a Jewish friend.
“It incorporates folk tunes and Jewish themes,” she explained, the final movement emerging as a kind of “dance macabre.”
Opening with a somber cry, Jetter’s high-pitched cello solo introduced and sustained a sense of anguish. The tone persisted as Williams entered octaves below, as if he were playing a viola.
The contrast created a sense of doom, an upended world. When Campi entered with a low-octave piano pulse, the tragic tone continued.
Throughout the four-movement work, dominant voices emerged and disappeared, with an unexpectedly beautiful solo piano entrance in the largo. The final allegretto brought back the eerie opening doom and concluded with that “dance macabre.”
Playing with both forceful energy and subtlety, the trio showed a marvelous, new level of confidence.
After a short break, the musicians performed Brahms’ beautiful, brimming “Trio No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 101.”
“This was Brahms last trio,” Williams said, placing the work in the summer of 1886. Relatively short by Brahmsian standards, the work took a mere 20 minutes to sparkle with long luscious lines, sudden stops and shafts of light unexpectedly pouring through rough clouds of musical darkness.
In the andante, a gorgeous string duet was followed by the piano’s ascendency with spare pizzicato accompaniment. At the end, all the musical fragments, truncated phrases and turnabouts came into focus with Campi’s rolling-thunder arpeggios.
jreynolds@durangoherald.com. Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, art historian and arts journalist.
