For Eroica Trio and Young Fans, It’s the Emotion That Matters

Right away, you can see that the glamour-girl Eroica Trio isn’t catering to the sedate chamber-music crowd you usually encounter in town. At the Ford Amphitheatre on Monday night, its distinctly youthful following seemed to whoop and whistle as much for its daring designer gowns as for its hyper-emotional music-making-and cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio playfully encouraged them.

You can just hear the die-hards muttering, “What’s this world coming to?” Fortunately, Sant’Ambrogio, violinist Adela Pena and pianist Erika Nickrenz hit upon a work that can withstand a glut of emotion--Shostakovich’s wartime Piano Trio No. 2, whose finale sports a Jewish-flavored theme that is pummeled and beaten into a savage march (no wonder it was banned for a while in the Soviet Union).

On its EMI recording, the Trio comes closer to the score’s fast recommended timings than almost any other group--and live, its interpretation has deepened and intensified, with a demonic, snarling quality in the scherzo, good command of the sustained line in the largo and plenty of tough rhythmic brutality in the finale. The Trio was not technically immaculate, and there were a few questionable portamentos from Sant’Ambrogio, but these were minor flaws: The piece’s main points were driven home. The performance was dedicated to the victims and rescue workers of the attack on the World Trade Center.

In Beethoven’s Trio in B-Flat, Op. 11, the Trio pushed the tempos forward in a tempestuous rendition, taking Beethoven at his word with a wide dynamic range but also some overly precious treatments of less extroverted passages. The turbulence spilled over into Brahms’ Trio in B, Op. 8; the scherzo galloped away at a hair-raising clip. And there were three engaging encores--all by Astor Piazzolla.