MUSIC REVIEW : Chamber Trio Brings Tough Sound to Doheny

Three immensely gifted young local musicians--pianist John Novacek, violinist Cheryl Staples and cellist Timothy Landauer--with a clutch of awards to their individual credit and increasingly high-profile (individual) engagements as well, presented a disquieting program of chamber music at Doheny Mansion on Friday.

The event, sponsored by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, began promisingly, with the trio’s big-toned, fittingly broad reading of the majestic introduction to Beethoven’s “Kakadu” Variations. The theme and variations themselves, supposedly supreme examples of the Titan in perkiest fettle, were projected with unseemly aggressiveness and, at times, excessive volume in the already very live Doheny acoustic.

*

The ensuing Ravel Trio offered countless instances of individual virtuosity. As regards ensemble interpretation of this most insinuating, sexy component of the piano trio repertory, the artists sounded at a loss.

The subtle dynamic requirements of the score were left to the imagination, as was Ravel’s rhythmic variety in a performance that shouted, strained and screamed when it should have suggested and, ultimately, seduced. The thick sonic blanket frequently thrown over the proceedings by the over-pedaled piano hardly helped, either.

The most composed, relaxed playing of the evening came in the slow movement of the sublime B-flat Trio of Schubert: as much an example of sensitive interplay as individual strength, with singing interchanges between Staples--here, for once, employing a touch of expressive portamento--and Landauer.

Their differences in articulation and sound, she with her very 1990s fast vibrato and sinewy tone, he with his old-fashioned wide vibrato and darkly resonant tone, served to create welcomed contrast rather than unwarranted tension.