<<  -- 2 --  Malcolm Miller    SHOSTAKOVICH AND BEETHOVEN TRIOS

The concert began with the proto-modernism of Shostakovich's Trio No 1, a youthful work written when the composer was just seventeen, following his graduation in 1923 from the St Petersburg Conservatory. The Stockholm Arts Trio captured just the right mood of warm introspection at the start, the yearning chromatic first theme shared amongst the three with an involving detached objectivity. Stefan Bojsten conveyed the lean linear piano textures with controlled delicacy, and bright ebullience in the more extrovert and piquantly skipping contrasting theme, evocatively combined with the pulsating strings. An expression of Shostakovich's first love for Tanya Glivenko, this work radiates the bloom of youth. That emotion is portrayed especially where the momentum -- now presented by cello solo -- is interrupted for the luminescent theme of the slow movement, the breadth and tonal direction of which looks ahead to the cello sonata. The cellist Thorlief Thedeen projected it with rich colour, echoed with intensity by Dan Almgren, the two string players very well blended in general within a balance that allowed the work's many ideas full rein throughout. It is a beautifully structured work, that retrieves its initial mood of brooding passion towards the conclusion yet builds into a impassioned melodic climax, redolent of Rachmaninov. The Stockholm Trio's cohesive blend, finely honed string sound and the piano's mixture of resonance and brittle articulation was throughout alert to its changing moods.

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