“Delphi” is a mythically appropriate name for a piano trio: Apollo was taught the art of divination by three winged nymphs; three maxims, including the famous “know thyself,” were carved into Apollo’s temple at Delphi where, according to Plutarch, three women once simultaneously served as Pythian priestesses, sitting atop a golden, sacrificial tripod to deliver their oracles.
San José Chamber Orchestra took the ancient Rule of Three seriously in their January 8 concert at Trianon Theatre, a temple-like, Greek Revival structure. The concert featured the local Delphi Trio in a performance of William Bolcom’s three-movement Piano Trio.
Michelle Kwon (who usually is the orchestra’s principal cellist) opened the evening with Schumann’s Cello Concerto, in a chamber-orchestra adaptation by Kerry Lewis. With reduced forces, the work took on an almost Mozartean quality.
Conductor Barbara Day Turner should have backed off strict tempo beating in the first portion of the piece and let Kwon guide things: The soloist sounded a tad constrained, though she did rise up with some powerful attacks on “surprise” syncopations. In the central section, Kwon offered a subtle interpretation of Schumann’s bittersweet theme. At this point, acting principal Ellen Sanders joined in duet with Kwon and their lines blended together like a pair of operatic lovers, surrounded by a sparkling halo of pizzicato strings. The moment was all the more intimate in the chamber arrangement.
I assumed Schumann’s piece would be out of place alongside three 20th/21st–century works. But in many ways, the 1850 cello concerto, with its unusual, one-movement fantasia form and innovative thematic development, was more experimental than Bolcom’s three-year-old Piano Trio. There’s nothing particularly “neo” about his brand of neo-Romanticism. Granted, a composer can be original in a tonal idiom, but there’s a higher chance of sounding derivative. In Bolcom’s trio, I heard plenty of Beethoven, Schubert, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, and Debussy, but not much Bolcom. It was only in the scherzo-like third movement that we heard some of his trademark rags and a more “American” sound, in the form of folksy fiddle slides.
The stormy first movement opened with rumbling chords in Jeffrey LaDeur’s piano part — the same gesture that opens Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. Kwon and violinist Liana Bérubé entered with a brooding melody that turned out to be the first theme of a modified sonata form. The slow, middle movement was a lovely nocturne that might have emerged from 1890s France. The Debussyan piano part and Kwon’s rocking cello line accompanied Bérubé’s silvery solo in a moonlit barcarolle.
Bolcom’s tightly knit motivic structure rivals those of the classical masters. But a grand, all-concerto evening may not have been the best venue for this work. It would have fared better in a chamber concert; here, it was dwarfed by the virtuosity of the rest of the program.
Another piece that could have been axed was Leonard Bernstein’s 1951 Serenade, after Plato: Symposium, with Bérubé as the violin soloist. (She usually serves as the orchestra’s associate concertmaster). The fifth movement of this work makes a Delphic reference — its neurotic opening section represents Socrates visiting a seer.
In her program note, Bérubé wrote that she “detested the piece immediately,” though warmed up to it after weeks of learning it. She ought to have stuck with her gut reaction. Aside from the jazzy, Bernstein-sounding, fifth movement, it’s not a fun piece to listen to — it’s neurotic, confused, and jumbled. The lyrical moments aren’t very beautiful, and the experimental passages aren’t particularly inventive.
What is more, it doesn’t seem fun to play: Bérubé struggled with the unforgiving double stops in the cadenza, and her tone sounded harsh and metallic in the stratospheric opening solo. Though this is more the fault of Bernstein than Bérubé, she would do well to spare future audiences and strike it from her repertoire.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1933 Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings is also a bit of jumble, but a thrilling and comic one that doesn’t take itself too seriously. LaDeur is a decisive and muscular player who brilliantly maneuvered through the abrupt mood and tempo shifts that make this work sound like the score to some surrealist cartoon or silent film.
Trumpeter Mark Grisez emphasized the jazzy, 1930s music-hall quality of his muted solo in the second movement. He and LaDeur teamed up for the theatrics of the third movement: There is a moment when the trumpet attempts to commandeer the concerto, accompanied by a grotesque, “oom-pah” figure in the strings. LaDeur, having none of this, gave Grisez a look of frustration and banged down on the keyboard with a fortissimo chord in retaliation. It was a brilliant delivery of Shostakovich’s musical joke.