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MUSIC REVIEW | CLAREMONT TRIO Brahms Likes Them Young and Ferocious On Monday evening the Claremont Trio offered an object lesson in how deceiving looks can be. All three musicians - Donna Kwong, pianist; Emily Bruskin, violinist; and Julia Bruskin, cellist - are young and petite, yet with the right score in front of them, they play with an uncommon ferocity. The right score was Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor (Op. 25), which closed the program and for which Ida Kavafian joined them to play the viola line. From the first pages, it was clear that this ensemble would not make the common mistake of tiptoeing around Brahms or of keeping the music's passion in check. Tempos were driven, accented chords were hammered sharply and decisively, and the group's tone had a fiery brightness. These qualities were toned down, appropriately, in the Intermezzo and the warm-hued Andante con moto, but they were back with a vengeance - which took the form of a rustic edge - in the closing Rondo allaZingarese. The trio opened its program with a somewhat more subdued reading of Vitezslav Novak's Trio Quasi unaBallata, a late-Romantic rarity awash in charming lyrical themes. It also gave a performance of Leon Kirchner's Trio No. 1 (1954) that was notable for the vibrancy with which they brought to life the interchanges that give this music the spirit of a lively and sometimes contentious discourse. The Claremont Trio is to perform on Jan. 11 at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and on Jan. 22 at the Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg, Pa. Return to the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award |
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