With so many festive events looming in the run-up to Christmas, it seems suitable to retreat into something purely musical. Two concerts next week fit the bill exactly, taking place on consecutive evenings. So if you come over all Scrooge, there’ll be no shortage of respite, in Taipei at least, from the pre-Christmas confection.
The youthful Haydn Trio Eisenstadt is one of the world’s most highly regarded chamber music lineups. The trio is appearing at Taipei’s cozy Novel Hall in a program of Haydn and Schubert, plus a short modern fantasy on Haydn’s many happy rondos by William Bolcom.
Haydn brought the piano trio to maturity. Previously the keyboard had dominated, with the violin and cello merely strumming along. Indeed, the two works the Eisenstadt are playing in Taipei were published in 1797 as “trio sonatas with accompaniment for violin and cello.” But in giving all instrumentalists equal importance, Haydn gave birth to the classical piano trio; he’d already done the same for the string quartet.
Haydn wrote 43 piano trios, and the Eisenstadt will play two of the finest on Tuesday, numbers 27 and 29 (performed in reverse order).
Haydn is credited with an easygoing virtuosity and irrepressible good humor, but the virtuosity shouldn’t be underestimated. He was nothing if not modest, but his underlying intelligence is very real.
The program concludes with a glorious work where everything is on display for what it is, and the heart very much on the sleeve. This is Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat Major, where all Haydn’s preparatory spadework leads to a full and rich harvest. Master cellist Pablo Casals was once so moved when recording the slow movement that he could be heard moaning none too quietly throughout, and the engineers hadn’t the heart (or perhaps the technology) to edit it out.
It’s always hard to turn down the chance to hear again Taiwan’s magnificent Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, the world’s only wholly privately funded orchestra. It’s playing Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony and Dvorak’s Cello Concerto at the National Concert Hall on Wednesday under the orchestra’s charismatic conductor Gernot Schmalfuss.
If there was a major influence on Dvorak it was surely Schubert, and the Czech’s much-loved cello concerto arguably owes something to the piano trio.
The Evergreen’s soloist will be Taiwan’s Ling-yi Ou Yang (歐陽伶宜). Her CD combining classical cello and Taiwanese Aboriginal music, Momoyama! Lawkah!, was a great success in 2006. She’s also recorded Bach’s six suites for solo cello, and on Wednesday evening she’ll be performing another of the greatest masterpieces of the classical cello repertory.
The program concludes with the most popular of Prokofiev’s seven symphonies, the Fifth, completed in 1944.
Both the Eisenstadt Trio and Taiwan’s Evergreen Orchestra are essentially young groupings, and their performances in Taipei on consecutive nights constitute a pre-Christmas gift to the capital’s classical music lovers.
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