THE key to the potency of this Beaux Arts Trio concert came with founder Menahem Pressler's introduction to Kurtág's Hommage à Christian Wolff as: "Intense yet very soft … talking in whispers with little phrases of deep feeling … with truth that is e
ternal … please listen with sympathy, for we will play it with love."
He may be 84 and diminutive with time, but Menahem remains a colossus of the piano, playing as if the distilled wisdom of a lifetime was flowing through his fingers. The rapport between Menahem, violinist Daniel Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses was riveting, with some of the most expressive pianissimo play one can hear, their consummate lyricism fluently underpinning Mendelssohn's Piano Trio in D Minor.
The trio accentuated the quirky gestures of two of Kurtág's miniature portraits as if creating spontaneous line drawings in sound. They were a sorbet for the palate in preparation for an elegiac reading of Beethoven's Archduke Trio in B Flat, the work's deep humanity palpable in the third andante cantabile movement.
After 53 years, it seems this may have been the Beaux Arts Trio's swan song. If so, they left us with a profound celebration of life – and by offering Shostakovich's fiendish Devil's Scherzo as encore, reminding us that it is one life that remains fierily exuberant.
The full article contains 223 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
