As in an ideal marriage, the members of the Kalichstein- Laredo-Robinson Trio have managed to keep it real.
Indeed, violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson are married offstage, as well as in their blended musical careers that they have shared with pianist Joseph Kalichstein for nearly three decades.
Closing another unmistakably successful Friends of Chamber Music season at Gates Concert Hall on Wednesday, the couple boldly plucked, caressed and trounced their way through Joan Tower’s “For Daniel,” an abstruse work composed for the trio upon the death of Tower’s young nephew.
The strings led the charge through a clamor of emotions, especially in their deeply felt expression of anger and bereavement. The intensely aggressive, single-movement work is no gentle farewell to a dearly departed but a flailing of fists at a cruel fate – and the triumvirate of seasoned musicians bore out every tinge of despair and despondency, and the labored breathing of the dying.
The spotlight shifted to Ka lich stein in Beethoven’s Trio in G Major, a far sunnier score that opens with a wandering, exploratory adagio movement.
The work unfolded like rural scenery, with Kalichstein’s nimble fingers weaving harmony among the glittering string passages in the vigorous allegro movement. Fast and furious, Kalichstein’s deep reach into the key bed kept his tone from ever being severe or overpowering – no matter that some of his passages were technically incoherent.
The musical cadre demonstrated absolute synchronicity of thought and unity of sound in the lyrical largo. Appropriately restrained in the scherzo, the trio then pulled out all the stops in the exhilarating presto movement.
Seemingly with energy to spare, the best in show came last – a riveting rendering of Johannes Brahms’ Trio in C Major. Drawing on the full, glorious sonority of her instrument, Robinson waltzed alongside Laredo in accented rhythms that were soon punctuated by Kalichstein for an overall syncopated, wonderfully surprising effect.
The subsequent theme and variations that followed were a delightful passel of lush Hungarian motifs – all of which resolved into an unabashedly joyful conclusion underscored by Kalichstein’s impossibly swift and feather-light arpeggios.
The icing on the cake was the trio’s encore selection from Joseph Haydn’s Trio in G Major.
