Ghostly and Mysterious: The Martinez Urioste Brey Trio, by Seth Lachterman

Martinez-urioste-brey-400

Gabriela Martinez, Carter Brey, Elena Urioste

Opening Concert of the Twenty-Second Season of Tannery Pond, Sunday 3PM, May 27, 2012
Gabriela Martinez piano, Elena Urioste violin, Carter Brey cello

Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Trio in D major, Opus 70, No. 1 (“Ghost”)
            Allegro vivace e con brio
            Largo assai ed espressivo
            Presto

Paul Schoenfield
Café Music (1986)
            Allegro con fuoco
            Andante moderato
            Presto

Maurice Ravel

Trio in A minor
            Modéré
            Pantoum : Assez vif
            Passacaille: Très large
            Final: Animé

This program that opened the twenty-second season for the Tannery Pond Concerts was something of an unholy trinity. It was easy to get an anxious sense of alienation in hearing Beethoven’s quintessentially Romantic and supernaturally imbued work followed by Schoenfield’s rollicking yet also phantasmagoric ragtime; Ravel’s rarified sonorities at the end acted as a divine sublimation of sorts. Not everyone was pleased with this programming. At intermission, several audience members commented how they felt Schoenfield’s Café Music was the afternoon’s sore thumb. Having been caught up in the ragtime revival of the 1960s and 1970s myself, I welcomed the piecehaving succumbed to its charms in the past decade.Café Music is Schoenfield’s best known work enjoying wide exposure: Sirius XM programs it regularly and several fine recordings are available on both CD and in the iTunes library. Diehard chamber music enthusiasts might regard it as an unneeded “crossover” for a musically sophisticated audience. While its placement might have not have been ideal within the current program’s context, I was delighted by the change of musical idiom.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!