Music Review : Calvarola String Trio Introduces Biggs Work

Unlike the string quartet repertory, the literature for string trio doesn’t fill several file cabinets. Thus a living composer might be especially inclined to write for the combination, provided he finds an ensemble that is ready and willing.

The composer, in this case, was John Biggs, the ensemble the Calvarola String Trio, which closed a concert at Santa Monica Unitarian Community Church on Wednesday evening by performing Biggs’ Inventions for String Trio and Tape, two of the four movements being presented publicly for the first time.

There is a syndrome that befalls many contemporary works, the etiology of which must be either the composer’s fear of boring the listeners or his lack of ability to develop musical ideas. The result is a string of episodes, none of which lasts long enough for ideas really to go anywhere.

Although Biggs demonstrates some admirable melodic and contrapuntal skill, much of the taped material is just naive and downright silly--such as the tongue-clicks and the “chipmunk” singing--and betrays a lack of sophistication with the medium.

The string-playing on the Inventions, however, was the best of the evening. Not that it wasn’t good before that. In Beethoven’s Trio in G, the three Los Angeles-based musicians demonstrated admirable facility and uncommon interpretive unity. Intonation on occasion did falter and the semiquavers of the Presto threatened to capsize the rhythmic boat, but Calvarola proved a generally taut ensemble.

Dohnanyi’s Serenade, one of the standard works for this combination, followed. Though violinist Tamsen Beseke Brenton tended to overassertion and violist Lynn Lusher Grant played with a sometimes sterile sound (not the case in the Inventions), all three, including cellist Maurice Grants, capitalized on the work’s opportunities for expressive probing.