MUSIC REVIEW : Bowdoin Trio Brings Its Vibrant Brand of Chamber Music to Laguna

The Bowdoin Trio is not among the household names of chamber music, but if the concert presented Sunday night by the Laguna Beach Chamber Music Society is any indication, it soon will be.

This youthful, New York-based ensemble has been around for six years now, and its playing combines the better qualities of that mixture of youth and experience: confident, assured technique and calm, unselfish collaboration.

The Trio in E minor, Opus 67, by Shostakovich was the highlight of the program at Laguna Beach High School. Written during the closing years of World War II, the music is filled with dark thoughts rendered in somber hues and bleak light. Its pessimistic outlook and sinister use of Jewish folk melody--said to be the composer’s protest against anti-Semitism--were contributing factors to its being banned after the first performance.

It offers a formidable challenge to performers, and the Bowdoin played with every bit of the athletic vigor the work requires. It was a performance of huge contrasts, from the eerie, slippery cello harmonics of the opening to the massive, almost symphonic outburst of Jewish themes in the finale. The grotesqueries of scoring were vividly drawn: the quick crescendos, the slamming pizzicato snaps, the rumbling bass of the piano, the icy strumming of the strings. The music’s big emotions were captured dramatically, and throughout, the ensemble played with an undaunted technique.

Brahms’ Trio in C major, Opus 67, followed. It was a difficult work to enter fully into after the stark Shostakovich. Its fervent lyricism and nostalgic sentiment had just been thoroughly denied by the Russian composer.

This had nothing to do with the Bowdoin’s performance however. The melting lyricism of the phrasing, the natural, forward flow in tempo and the ensemble’s dark, weighty sonorities gave full emotional breadth to the music.

The Opus 1, No.1 of Beethoven, his Trio in E-flat, opened the concert. Here, the Bowdoin adopted an entirely different sound, one of light, detached articulation, quick accents and delicate, sprightly rhythmic inflection. The outer movements were spirited and irresistibly bubbly; the second movement cantabile was given gentle sway, elegant warmth.

Serving as a fluttering, virtuosic encore was the Scherzo from the Trio, Opus 49, by Mendelssohn.