A Night of Surprises From Osiris Piano Trio

The Music Guild was struck by more of those infuriating last-minute program changes Monday night at Cal State Northridge; one entered the concert hall primed for certain pieces and got others instead.

The Osiris Piano Trio was originally set to play Schubert’s Piano Trio, Opus 100, but several days ago there was an announced switch to the Opus 99 Trio. Yet by curtain time, Opus 100 was back in place. Then, when preparation time fell short, another previously announced piece, the Ravel Trio, went over the side, replaced by one of the Dutch group’s home-grown commissions, Roel van Oosten’s 1992 Pianotrio. Sigh.

The one piece untouched by the upheavals, Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Opus 1, No. 3, received the most polished performance, with the piano, violin and cello blending fluidly, if not with completely optimum balance--from the left side of the hall, the fully opened piano seemed to dominate.

At the sacrifice of a bit of its earlier precision, the Osiris produced more passion, momentum and rhetorical power in the Schubert Opus 100, which in a good performance hardly ever fails to cast its spell, with its mesmerizing tunes and the treading rhythm of the second movement. The Van Oosten piece turned out to be an agreeable, often turbulent, mildly dissonant work in four classical movements, with faint mechanistic whiffs of Prokofiev and Bartok, but hardly a trace of the jazz influence promised in the program notes. Though not something that grabs you by the lapels, the piece is an encouraging sign of the Dutch government’s willingness to sponsor new music and Osiris’ desire to pursue it.

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This program will repeat tonight at 8 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., L.A. (310) 552-3030.