NZTrio are Callum Hall, Amalia Hall and Somi Kim. Photo / Supplied
NZTrio are Callum Hall, Amalia Hall and Somi Kim. Photo / Supplied
Once again, NZTrio’s latest concert more than lived up to its title, Fantastique, offering a first-class world tour from Europe and Russia, through Tibet, to Aotearoa New Zealand.
Turina’s Circulo vividly compresses a Spanish day into 10 minutes, from mysterious dawn to equally magical darkness.
All was brilliantly evoked, especiallyin the flamenco-fired middle movement, with Somi Kim’s sinuous piano snaking through the slashing pizzicato of Amalia and Callum Hall.
The shifting moods of a piano trio by a teenage Shostakovich, set off with soulful strings over Kim’s gently insistent chords.
This contrasted with Chen Yi’s spirited Tibetan Tunes, which spun extraordinary filigree textures around fairly robust folk music.
NZTrio has constructed its 2025 concerts around major scores by French composers, and tonight, Cesar Franck’s F sharp minor Trio, another work from a teenage pen, provided a dramatic finale.
This was fascinating, if slightly marred by what would become compositional cliches in this composer’s later career. Yet, the three musicians dressed it up as if it were a major opus, through to the unleashing of almost orchestral climaxes around Kim’s Lisztian outbursts.
Predictably, the unexpected Haydnesque jest of a “false” ending – a few seconds’ silence before the final flourish – inspired a burst of applause from the captivated audience.
The absolute high point of this immensely entertaining evening was John Psathas’ new Angelus. From its beginnings, NZTrio has always encouraged local commissions and this must go down as one of its finest.
The relentless toccata of Psathas’ fiery opening pages revealed this composer’s special gift for harnessing prodigious energy into a uniquely compulsive intensity, recalling for me his arresting chamber works of the 1990s.
Written at the time of his mother’s death, Psathas does admit light into the score’s surging darkness, with a slower, meditative section, illuminated by a mysterious and very effective “sonic halo”.
An experience that is destined, no doubt, to dig into the collective heart of Australian audiences when NZTrio takes this programme across the Tasman next month.
