Seamless turn from three to one

The Brahms Piano Trio made an impassioned Los Angeles area debut Monday at the Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center, as part of the Music Guild series. Two of the musicians were familiar. Violinist Alla Aranovskaya and cellist Leonid Shukaev play in the renowned St. Petersburg String Quartet, which regularly tours. Joining them was pianist Maxim Mogilevsky.

The three shared the same approach to the music, melding seamlessly as an ensemble. They played Brahms’ glorious Piano Trio in B, Opus 8, as if to the style born. It was rich, comforting, noble, heroic, bold, intimate, prayerful, ineffable.

They opened the concert with Rachmaninoff’s “Trio elegiaque” in G minor, a work that could be ascribed to Tchaikovsky, with no loss of dignity for either composer.

They brought two unfamiliar pieces. The first was the only completed movement of a Piano Trio in E flat that Alexander Alyabiev wrote shortly before the War of 1812. Though clearly influenced by Mozart and Beethoven, the music is accomplished and engaging.

The most challenging work, however, was the Los Angeles premiere of Georgian composer Zurab Nadarejshvili’s powerful Piano Trio, composed in 1995. Combining 12-tone theory and native folk music, it suggests a history of the world, from the Big Bang opening to laments for the dead.

What happens in between is evoked by the use of Stalin’s favorite folk tune, “Suliko,” to represent the Soviet dictator. Its obsessive recurrence reflects increasingly desperate efforts to make real music out of the banal tune. The finale is an overwhelming memorial to the victims of his regime.

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Brahms Piano Trio

Where: Peters Auditorium, Beverly Hills High School, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills

When: Today, 8 p.m.

Price: $9 to $26

Contact: (323) 954-0404