Trio Nareg offers Armenian rarities

A new piano trio has come onto the scene, one that definitely has an identity of its own.

Named after the 10th century Armenian mystic poet St. Gregory of Nareg, Trio Nareg aims to mix Armenian repertoire with European classics, not unlike the Dilijan Chamber Music Concert Series downtown. Appropriately, the trio made its debut Wednesday night in Burbank’s Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America -- another distinctly different locale for the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College’s Chamber Music in Historic Sites series.

Two of the musicians are noted veterans -- pianist Armen Guzelimian and violinist Ani Kavafian -- while cellist Ani Kalayjian represents a young, up-and-coming generation. On Wednesday, the balance of the instruments tended to strongly favor the piano and the violin, but this cannot be attributed solely to star power. For one thing, Guzelimian was manning an aircraft carrier of a piano, a 97-key Bosendorfer Imperial with the lid fully open.

Yet already, one could hear a well-developed sense of give-and-take in Haydn’s brief Trio in A, Hob. XV:9, with Guzelimian offering a particularly sharp, incisive presence (the Bosendorfer can serve classical-period music surprisingly well). The Mendelssohn Trio in C minor was a little rough in patches -- especially the difficult, quicksilver scherzo -- but the performance had life and impressive weight.

Of greatest interest were the rarities from Armenia. Arno Babadjanian’s Piano Trio turned out to be another powerful, unabashedly Romantic composition from this composer -- a little easier on the Rachmaninoff sauce this time, highlighted by the juicy, gorgeous melody lines for the strings in the second movement before a boisterous folk-flavored finale.

Tigran Mansurian’s meditations and modernisms are more fashionable these days; his style is a good fit for the sleek sound of the ECM label, which has released a lot of his music. Yet the most striking thing about his Five Bagatelles -- with its episodes of spare trance music and vehement mini-dances -- is its symmetry, the arch-like shapes of each of the central three pieces and the work as a whole. Trio Nareg also played a lighthearted Edward Aprahamian scherzo that was loaded with tunes of local color.

Everything sounded clear, if rather dry, in the ballroom-like Nazareth and Sima Kalaydjian Hall, which is very well-insulated from the noise of its next-door neighbor, Interstate 5.