MUSIC REVIEW : Diaz Trio Brings Virtuosity to Historic Sites Performance

Virtuosically skilled, musically hyper-aggressive and completely at home with each other, the members of the Diaz Trio made their West Coast ensemble debut in the Pompeiian Room at the Doheny Mansion Friday night.

For this opening concert in the newest season of Chamber Music in Historic Sites, the three players--violinist David Kim and the brothers violist Roberto Diaz and cellist Andres Diaz--proved that, though they can produce quiet, even ruminative music, they do not often espouse gentleness.

Chamber music, they seemed to be communicating to their sold-out audience at this Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College event, is a macho endeavor. Their colorful playing of Dohnanyi’s kaleidoscopic Serenade, Opus 10, and Beethoven’s full-blooded Trio in G, Opus 9, No. 1, certainly gave that impression.

The guest appearance at mid-program of pianist Delores Stevens in Joaquin Turina’s A-minor Piano Quartet did nothing to contradict that sense.

The musically stylish, technically unflappable Stevens, playing on a wonderfully woody and mellow if practically ancient (circa 1887) Steinway, displayed again that Spanish music on old instruments can make the heart sing. The alert string players, as impassioned in this music as in Beethoven and Dohnanyi, maintained an energetic and probing performance.

Still, the high point became the often neglected Opus 9 of Beethoven, which was given an emotionally complete yet classically contained reading, led--one sensed--by the authoritative cellist, who seems to be the center of this trio.

At the end, the group offered the slow movement of Jean Francaix’s Trio (1933) as an encore. And, for almost the first time in this evening, a sense of repose dominated.