This is the story of a Greek piano trio that travels the United States collecting little treasures of new music for this emblematic chamber music format. The basket is filled with a dozen works by as many composers. That said, the harvest is confined to a fairly circumscribed family of fruits: those of a tonal modernism (very occasionally crossed by atonal tremors) that has the good taste to avoid purely cerebral aridity and dryness. Some pieces show a happy propensity for colourful expressivity (Alex Lubet’s Elusive), while others even dare to be melodic and very seductive (Dominic Dousa’s Three Sketches on the Artwork of Tom Lea). Some of the pieces are more light-hearted banter (Dylan Findley’s Ánimo) and others more evocative contemporary impressionism (Daniel Powers’s Before the Fragile Gradual Throne of Night, in which a delicate initial atonal chaos is metamorphosed into an extended tonal consonance based on A minor).
Several sources of inspiration are invoked: the poet e.e. cummings (Before the Fragile Gradual Throne of Night), classic rock (Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull in Tuning Exercise No. 8 by Navid Bargrizan, the only truly atonal piece in the set), traditional Welsh song (Suo Gan in Mary Ellen Haupert’s Variant), the visual arts (Dominic Dousa’s Three Sketches on the Artwork of Tom Lea) and ancient Persian music (Brian Bondari’s highly engaging Persian Dances).
If none of this propels today’s music towards new perspectives, the whole programme is resolutely interesting and a source of very pleasant discoveries, making you want to go and listen to vol.1, if you’ve missed it. Highly recommended.
