Trio’s Debut Hits the Mark

The Bachmann-Klibonoff-Fridman Trio roared into town on Friday to make its local debut in the Doheny Mansion on the downtown campus of Mount St. Mary’s College with a stunning, even merciless, display of ensemble and individual virtuosity.

Violinist Maria Bachmann, pianist Jon Klibonoff and cellist Semyon Fridman offered take-no-prisoners performances of two pillars of the repertory, Ravel’s single, ever-entrancing contribution to the genre and Beethoven’s thunderous “Ghost” Trio, as well as the exquisite, unaccountably neglected Trio in C minor of Felix Mendelssohn.

In each instance, execution was exemplary in terms of balance and linear clarity, interpretive unanimity and technical polish. These people are seemingly incapable of dropping a note or playing out of tune. Talk about flying fingers and always landing where the composer intended them to!

Withal, they barely made an effort on this occasion to differentiate among the stylistic requirements of the three disparate eras represented on the program. The same tonal weight, the same dynamic range--from quite loud to very loud--the same (fast) string vibrato, angular rhythms, avoidance of rubato and disdain for portamento, the same clobbering intensity was on display throughout.

But the threshold-of-pain effect on this listener, a confessed wimp when it comes to high-decibel music-making in confined spaces, was hardly widespread. The conclusion of the concert was greeted by the usually appreciative-but- reserved Da Camera Society audience with a noisy standing ovation, a happening exceedingly rare at chamber music events, even in clap-happy L.A.