Tasman Crossing Of Like Minds

The Age

Friday July 4, 2008

Clive O'Connell, Reviewer

INTERNATIONAL ATTITUDE

Latitude 37. Dante's Gallery, Fitzroy, June 2

MASTERS OF MELODY

TrioZ. Melba Hall, Parkville, July 2 www.selbyandfriends.com.au

TUESDAY night found two keyboard-centred trios at work close to the CBD. In Gertrude Street's Dante's Gallery, a new ensemble specialising in period music gave its inaugural recital, while Kathryn Selby's TrioZ, with a substitute cellist, performed a program of staples for its latest subscription series recital in the comfortable Melba Hall.

Latitude 37 connects Melbourne with New Zealand and the new early music group takes its name from that feature since one of its members, harpsichordist Donald Nicholson, is active on that country's musical scene, while the other performers - violinist Julie Fredersdorff and gamba expert Laura Vaughan - are based here. These talented young artists produced a brief program of sonatas by Buxtehude and Telemann, three Rameau pieces de concert, the popular ground-bass Sonnerie by Marin Marais, and a canzone by Bartolome de Selma y Salaverde.

Latitude 37 played with firm insistence, Fredersdorff's violin riding over the bass supporting lines with assured projection. If the performances in general impressed as insistent, the short Rameau excerpts showed an appealing suppleness of dynamic and rhythm, especially from Vaughan who has a reputation as an informed and accurate expert on gamba and lirone..

REPLACING cellist Emma-Jane Murphy, the Goldner String Quartet's cellist, Julian Smiles, slotted easily into the TrioZ music-making ethos with original members Kathryn Selby and violinist Niki Vasilakis.

The scheduled program of piano trios remained unchanged: Mozart in G Major K. 496, the Dvorak Dumky, and Schubert No. 2 in E flat. Smiles gave understated service in the first of these, which is keyboard-centric with plenty of warm-up matter for Selby, while the other group members occasionally enjoyed the spotlight.

But the remainder of the night proved the benefit of years of chamber music experience. Both the Dvorak and Schubert have become favourite chamber music competition fodder as well as material for young groups with an eye to the opportunities for weltering emotion in the Czech work. This TrioZ reading showed an admirable welding of technique and lyrical responsiveness, highlighted in the final pages of the third dumka, which produced persuasive, warm playing.

TrioZ's Schubert interpretation also lived up to the first half's promise, the riches here more numerous. Selby's restraint in the C minor Andante gave both string contributors space to play without strain, notably in their resonant pizzicato work; a fine realisation of the composer's direct voice with attention given to all dynamic shadings.

However, the players once again moved up several notches in their realisation of the third movement's trio - as definitively etched a picture as you could want of Schubert's ebullient honesty of expression.

© 2008 The Age

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