Trio’s Teamwork Takes Center Stage

Sometimes, the music, fine and important as it is, isn’t the subject of a concert. Instead, it’s partnership and ensemble, affectionate and respectful music-making at a very high caliber.

Such was the case when the three principal string players of the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed music by Beethoven, Kodaly, Handel as transformed by Johan Halvorsen, and Mozart Monday at the Gindi Auditorium at the University of Judaism.

Violinist Martin Chalifour, violist Evan N. Wilson and cellist Ronald Leonard paired off in every possible combination before teaming up for Mozart’s great Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563.

This gave them varied opportunities to show the finely matched, varied and responsive playing honed in their orchestral collaborations. Their enjoyment in the music and in particular accomplishments in phrasing, dynamics, attack and color could be seen in their occasional smiles and exchanged glances.

Like two boxers or, better, two dancers, Chalifour and Wilson stood, swayed and bobbed while playing from memory Halvorsen’s engaging if anachronistic, Paganini-like variations on a passacaglia by Handel.

Chalifour and Leonard worked together at a keen intellectual level to meet the challenges of Kodaly’s thorny and insinuating Duo for Violin and Cello, Opus 7. Leonard and Wilson enjoyed the flowing lyricism of Beethoven’s one movement Duo in E-flat, Opus WoO 32.

All these virtues were evident in Mozart’s Divertimento, but here something important was lacking. Leonard indicated what it was when he revealed in his line the vulnerability and heart the composer shows in the adagio.

But his colleagues didn’t match him. Theirs was more a young man’s Mozart, brimming with energy, clarity, warmth and sparkle, but not tragedy. Here the music needed to be the subject, rather than a splendid collaboration.