Strathearn Music Society Review – Lark Piano Trio
Wed 29th January 2025
Concerts in Crieff, promoted by the Strathearn Music Society, have been on the move over the last few months due to major heating works at their regular home of St Andrew’s Halls and last Wednesday at Strathearn Arts they reached their third venue of the season. After the last two concerts in the large and non-too-homely assembly hall of Strathearn Community Campus this represented a welcome step towards restoring the intimacy and immediacy of atmosphere which chamber music needs.
The three talented young players of the recently-formed Lark Piano Trio, Emma Baird (violin), Helen Le Grand (cello) and Anna Michels (piano) chose an ambitious programme, including as their main item Tchaikovsky’s mammoth Piano Trio in A minor, preceded by two excerpts from Jennifer Higdon’s “Colour Through”, with three of Schumann’s Canonical Studies to start. The latter proved to be a delightful opener (in the circumstances the audience might even have appreciated more than three?) while the complex and intricate rhythms of Jennifer Higdon’s music, inspired by the relationship between sound and colour, completed the concert’s first half on a more contemporary and exploratory note. “Pale Yellow” and “Fiery Red” showed the musicians in a different light, almost as the aural equivalent of shades on a painter’s palette.
At least three-quarters of an hour in duration, Tchaikovsky’s one and only Piano Trio is a daunting prospect for all involved, placing enormous technical demands on the players as well as probing the emotional responses of its listeners to the limit in a way seldom found in the chamber music repertoire. Written as a tribute to the composer’s close friend and mentor Nikolai Rubinstein it is at heart a personal exploration of loss and remembrance, created with all the symphonic passion and intensity of which Tchaikovsky the red-blooded Romantic was capable. No surprise therefore that the piano part is seriously big in every sense and, lofty concept and intentions notwithstanding, this inevitably leads to problems of balance in performance which, in this piece, tend to accumulate as it reaches its final stretch. There is therefore a basic conundrum here, which demands a compromise: either lower the piano lid (partly or even fully) and accept the associated loss of colour and tone or risk overpowering the violin and cello with the full sound of their naturally dominant partner. It’s a purely mundane limitation to have to impose on the grand design and inspiration of a great artist but it’s inescapable.
That the Lark Trio were more than equal to their chosen task is beyond doubt. In addition a fine Bösendorfer grand piano was theirs for the evening, courtesy of a very generous anonymous donation. On this occasion, though, the balance could have been improved by practical measures.
