Tour a triumph as Trio put on profound performance

MUSICA VIVA TASMANIA CONCERT FEATURING THE SITKOVETSKY TRIO Hobart Town Hall July 17

GUEST cellist Bartholomew Lafollette joined founding members Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin) and Wu Qian (piano) for the Sitkovetsky Trio’s second tour of Australia. It was only in the first work, Rachmaninov’s youthful Trio elegiaque No.1, where one or two moments of tricky ensemble in the otherwise beautiful cello playing suggested that Lafollette was a visitor!

The heart and soul of the concert was the magnificent Shostakovich Piano Trio No.2, Op.67 from 1943, opening with those astonishing otherworldly harmonics on cello.

This spare, profoundly melancholic, at times bitter music was superbly realised by these musicians.

Their handling of that final movement, with its tragi-comic Klezmer opening theme, was unforgettable.

It said something of these cohesive and committed performances that the remainder of the program was not an anticlimax.

Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth’s Piano Trio (2015) is an impressively wrought piece influenced by the spirit of the traditional Japanese shakuhachi, while Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No.1, Op.49 brought a wonderful blend of lyricism and intensity with an exhilarating scherzo and finale.

The encore was more Mendelssohn — the Andante espressivo from Piano Trio No.2 in C minor, Op.66.

— PETER DONNELLY