How lucky it is when, after five sometimes arduous hours at the semifinal piano trio of the ARD music competition at the University of Music, the last musicians play really well and worthy of a prize.
The “Amelio Trio” from Germany began with “kaolin”, the contemporary commissioned work by the Swede Malin Bång, which all six trios had to play: There are hardly any conventional playing techniques, but a lot of fascinatingly diverse things that are pushed, ripped and noisy, sometimes with the greatest intensity, then again very finely and gently performed, entirely true to the title. It refers to a clay that hardens porcelain and ceramics, but also makes skin creams more supple.
Philipp Kirchner on the piano, the violinist Johanna Schubert and Merle Geißer (cello) found, more than any other trio that day, a lively, intense collaboration that told an exciting story and made the austere piece almost shimmering. Beethoven’s “Ghost Trio” also had this exciting luminosity in every phrase and although all three showed their individual personalities, they reacted to each other wide awake in the trio and thus achieved an electrifying interpretation that made you pay attention every second.
No less exciting and very vitally virile, the three Frenchmen of the “Trio Pantoum” played the op. 70/1, perhaps a touch more homogeneously. And they also performed the commissioned work compellingly. So we can be excited about their Schubert (D 929) in the finale. The “Trio Orelon” was completely different: they were the only ones to choose the early Trio in C minor from Beethoven’s Op. 1. The first movement was wonderfully natural and musical, the variations movement was delicately simple and the “Prestissimo” finale was overwhelming. Judith Stapf never came to the fore with her violin, but always formed a fabulous duo with the gentle cello (Arnau Rovira Bascompte). This also secured them a place in the final.
While the three Japanese members of the “Trio Ex” indulged in the sound all too lavishly, which their instruments emphasized, and constantly overloaded Beethoven’s E flat major Trio op. 70/2, the Czech “Trio Bohémo” played Beethoven’s op. 70/ 1 as well as “kaolin” with great elasticity and clarity. Unfortunately, they still had to leave, as did the Arabesque Trio, who remained overly neutral and indifferent throughout.
At the finale on Saturday, September 9th (4 p.m.) in the Prinzregententheater, Hans Werner Henze’s Chamber Sonata and Franz Schubert’s B-flat major trio or his last in E-flat major can be heard three times.