By MATTHEW ERIKSON
Courant Staff Writer
November 25 2003
Serious chamber music enthusiasts in Hartford may not have many listening options - aside from summer festivals, the occasional visiting ensemble or the Hartt School's quartet in residence, the Miami String Quartet.
Yet the New World Chamber Ensemble has been one reliable source of chamber music since its founding in 1985. Now in its latest incarnation as a piano trio - with longtime artistic director and Hartford Symphony violinist Anhared Stowe at its helm - the group looks ahead to a bright future, confirmed Sunday afternoon in an incandescent performance at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.
With the musicians' glossy posters adorning the Bushnell, where they are now ensemble-in-residence, you might know the group better for its "Charlie's Angels" or alluring spidery poses. Yet these three image-conscious women come with impeccable musical credentials and chops.
Pianist and Hartt School alumna Pi-Hsun Shih, cellist and Connecticut native Melissa Morgan and Stowe presented a program of French repertoire in the acoustically and visually appealing Seaverns Room. They distinguished themselves with their taut, seemingly intuitive, ensemble and concentrated playing.
The sampling of "French Elegance" included two earlier works by Camille Saint-Saens and Ernest Chausson. More conservative and coming before the characteristically colorful and redolent French atmosphere of Faure and Franck, the Saint-Saens' Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 18 (1863) is not without its charms, captured agreeably by the trio. Shih handled the virtuosic piano part with agile ease and brilliant flashes of panache (Saint-Saens was an excellent pianist). Stowe's pleasantly pealing tone in the more emphatic outer moments of the trio smoothly changed color, even as the muted sections came across as a little wispy. Morgan added rich texture to the alternatively portentous and lyrical second movement.
The seldom-performed Piano Trio, Op. 3, of Chausson, composed in 1881, proved an interesting discovery. Dreamy, impassioned and rhapsodic, it lacks Debussian sang-froid or economy but persuades with its dramatic cyclic structure and evocative harmonic language.
Stowe and Morgan swapped solos in the opening, with Morgan's resonant playing warmly filling the room. Shih took advantage of Chausson's skillful use of register with searing precision playing.
More significant than any individual performing, the New World made abundantly clear the first rule of chamber music: the power of the whole surpassing the sum of the parts. Well-matched, together and balanced, the New World handled the tricky ensemble issues with aplomb.
The rewards to the listener culminated in the thrilling and luminescent last movement. Just as in the mixing of liquors in a fine cocktail, the three musicians of the New World combined together as one sound, potent and delectable.
Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant
