Musica Viva. The Adelaide Town Hall. 25 Aug 2022
The comprehensive, informative and readable program notes provided by Musica Viva tell us that Z.E.N is an acronym formed with an initial from each artist of the trio, and a philosophical statement about their performance style. Zhang Zuo on piano, Esther Yoo on violin, and Narek Hakhnazaryan on cello are three young artists – all on the right side of 35 years of age – who are clearly at the top of their game. They play with passion, technical virtuosity, and crucially a shared understanding of the music. Individually they are accomplished; together they are much greater than the sum of their parts.
At the half way point of the concert, they played young Australian composer Matthew Laing’s new composition Little Cataclysms, the performances of which are world premières on this particular Musica Viva tour. Laing himself was present at tonight’s performance and offered some introductory comments about his music. His words essentially alerted the audience to the fact that what they were about to hear would be entirely different to the style of compositions that bookended it on the program, namely Brahms’ Piano Trio No.1 in B major, Op. 9 (Revised version, 1889), and Babajanian’s Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in F-sharp Minor (1952), and he was right.
Little Cataclysms comprises five short non-related pieces that are strident and unsettling. The instruments in the trio are asked to frequently produce sounds that are at their limits and otherwise seldomly heard. It begins with Zhang Zuo attacking the piano as if it is a mainstream percussion instrument, and Esther Yoo and Narek Hakhnazaryan produce shimmering tonal undercurrents that can barely be heard above the boisterousness of the piano. There is a monotonously repeated note on the piano, and the strings nervously dance about it. Complexity is added. There are teasing suggestions of melody, but these are not developed and give way to other material that is ominous. Each piece seems to be over before it really begins, but this is deliberate. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the fractured times in which we live, with the need to be agile and able to adapt to rapid change?
To what extent does Z.E.N. capture Laing’s intentions? Do Zuo, Yoo, and Hakhnazaryan really ‘know’? Is it just a matter of reading what’s on the page, or, in the true spirit of Zen practise, do they eschew the egotism of ‘learned’ knowledge and instead favour direct understanding developed through individual performance? To this reviewer, the latter seems more likely, with the five ‘little cataclysms’ each comprising three disparate voices that retreat into and exist unto themselves, and together create a chaos that is just in control.
Laing’s Little Cataclysms is followed by Babajanian’s Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in F-sharp Minor (1952). Arno Babajanian was an Armenian composer who died in 1983 in Yerevan – the capital and largest city of Armenia – some five years before Narek Hakhnazaryan was born in Yerevan. Babajanian’s Trio is infrequently played today, which is a great shame. It is majestic, has wonderfully evocative melodies and an astonishingly beautiful middle slow movement, and it has a robust and stirring allegro vivace final movement. Hakhnazaryan noted in his introductory remarks how honoured he is to bring his countryman’s composition to our attention, and he played it with deep conviction. He is a joy to watch.
The concert began with a spirited performance of Brahms’ Piano Trio No.1 in B major, Op. 9 (Revised version, 1889). Z.E.N. immediately captured the joy and lyricism of the first movement. Zhang Zuo‘s use of the sustaining pedal is dramatic and theatrical, with her radically high-heeled shoes all but punishing the pedal into submission. Yoo provides the tonal backbone throughout, and Hakhnazaryan fleshes it out with expansive and lavish tones.
The Z.E.N. Trio is an exciting outfit, and the enthusiastic audience demanded an encore which they got: a feisty performance of a transcription for trio of Sabre Dance by Armenian composer Aram Ilyich Khachaturian.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
