Music Reviews : Zwilich Piano Trio Receives Local Premiere

The name of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is by now familiar to anyone having even the slightest interest in contemporary music. Thus the local premiere of the composer’s piano trio, in the hands of the players for whom it was written, was a source of particular interest.

It was also a source of particular joy. At the Biltmore Hotel--another one of the Da Camera Society’s “Historic Sites”--the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio made an irrefutable case for the work, to which they had given its premiere, three days earlier in San Francisco.

Doggedly eschewing any compositional party affiliation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning (1983) composer avoids trendy mannerisms and academic cliches. Her harmonic and structural vocabularies stem from the conservative traditional movements of this century, yet her music speaks with a strong, distinctive voice. The Trio makes a remarkably clear, succinct statement and displays a craftsmanship few living composers have been able to acquire.

Zwilich, herself a violinist, makes fine use of the expressive powers of the stringed instruments, frequently having one or both of them deliver an intense, slow-moving melodic line over an active piano ostinato. The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio were the ideal advocates here, for they proved especially adroit in creating palpable excitement from each and every phrase.

Such excitement found its way into Brahms’ Trio, Opus 8, where poignant contrasts and subtle shading made it seem as if one were hearing the work for the first time; indeed, hearing Brahms for the first time. One is already grateful to hear the radiant tone of violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson and the lyricism of pianist Joseph Kalichstein; it is doubly gratifying to hear the long Brahmsian lines rendered with such probing drama.

Beethoven’s Trio, Opus 11, received the same intelligent, revealing and moving treatment.