Ahn Trio Spices Up Program With New Work

Intent on investing some of its glamour-girl capital in a good cause, the Ahn Trio would like to do for the tradition-encrusted piano trio repertoire what the Kronos Quartet has done for the string quartet. Hence, “Ahn-Plugged,” a concept that has produced one intriguing EMI album (with another due in October), a string of concerts on that theme and hybrid events like the one at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Friday.

The announced program was scrapped for another with a similar plan--opening with a dash of tradition and spending the rest of the evening in the present tense. Tradition didn’t fare too well with a bland legato reading of Haydn’s Trio No. 45 in E-flat major, but the sisters Ahn soon became invigorated by the new music, all written for them this year.

If you were looking for something truly startling, you wouldn’t find it in Maurice Jarre’s “Engadiner Suite” (a U.S. premiere), in which the composer of “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Dr. Zhivago” sends the Ahns on a rambling, tuneful, mostly pretty journey through Alpine-inspired soundscapes. Nor would you find it in Michael Nyman’s “Yellow Beach,” where fluttery lyrical passages alternate with the agitated minimalist machine.

The least-known--and youngest (29 this year)--composer, Kenji Bunch, provided the most interesting music in “Swing Shift: Music for Evening Hours,” which prowls urbanely through nocturnal New York City for nearly half an hour, incorporating stylized impressions of jazz while chugging to a close with something resembling a mechanized funk groove. The ideas sometimes wear thin, and the Ahns could have swung the pop sections more, but this and the hilarious encore, a Kronos-like take on The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm,” had some of the pizazz the Ahns apparently seek.