Thibaud Trio Doesn’t Play by the Book

Barely 4 years old, the French-named, Berlin-formed Jacques Thibaud String Trio gave its first Southern California performance Tuesday night in Long Beach, 24 hours after its scheduled but rained-out Music Guild debut in Woodland Hills.

In Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall at Cal State Long Beach, the three members of the ensemble--violinist Burkhard Maiss, violist Philip Douvier and cellist Uwe Hirth-Schmidt--looked to post a combined age under 75, yet their playing had authority as well as heat; indeed, it proved both compelling and graceful.

Page turners need not apply to work with the Thibaud Trio, named after the beloved French violinist. Neither scores nor music stands clutter the stage when they perform: They play from memory.

As shown in Long Beach, this is not a gimmick, it’s just their style, and it pays off in many ways. The players are able to hear and listen to one another; they are utterly free of the tyranny of text; it adds spontaneity to their music-making.

It makes one wonder if the composer’s directions are being followed accurately. In the case of these three, one can relax. They are highly individual artists and virtuosos, but in all three works on Tuesday--Beethoven’s Trio in C minor, Opus 9, No. 3, the Trio in A minor by Reger and Mozart’s exposing Divertimento, K. 563--their musical and mechanical choices reflected an exalted expertise.

The Beethoven work had abundant authority and urgency. The usually tight-laced Reger produced an uncharacteristically personal Trio--melancholy and bucolic by turns--which might now be subtitled “The Professor Dances.” Mozart’s kaleidoscopic Divertimento in E-flat wore all its many colors proudly. The delayed concert, which might have been anticlimactic, instead became a triumph.