Centre Stage: Kegelstadt Trio, CBSO Centre, Birmingham. 30 May 2024.

Review 4✩✩✩✩: David Gray

“A Fascinating and revelatory exploration of less well know works for an unusual combination of instruments.”

Schumann – Märchenerzählungen Op. 132

Adès – Four Berceuses from the Exterminating Angel

Bruch – Four Pieces Op. 83

Mozart – Kegelstadt Trio K. 498

This was an interesting and unexpected concert that explored some of the repertoire available for an unusual trio of instruments: piano, viola and clarinet.

The opening work, Schumann’s ‘Märchenerzählungen’, or Fairy tales, does not, perhaps, make the strongest case for the combination. Underpinned by a strongly rhythmic piano part, the other instruments provide rather fragmentary splashes of colour, calling and responding, but only occasionally joining in duet. Not until the penultimate movement is there a strong feeling of all the instruments coming together as an ensemble, with a sustained, lyrical,contrapuntal dialogue between the viola and clarinet.

Thomas Adès perhaps sets out to create a disjointed and uneasy ambience in his ‘Four Berceuses from the Exterminating Angel’, so there was, once again a feeling of disconnectedness between the instruments. And it was only with Bruch’s Four Pieces Op. 83 that we got the sense of a composer who really understood how to write melodic lines shaped to the character of the viola and of the clarinet, and how to combine the two.

These are lush pieces that really gave clarinettist, Oliver Janes, and viola Christopher Yates achance to shine, and show off the beauty and distinctive quality of their various instruments. The final piece of the grouping is breathtakingly lovely and was played with exquisite expression.

Mozart was a viola player and, obviously, a gifted pianist. His music always come vividly to life when he writes for the clarinet, an instrument for which he clearly had a deep affinity. His Kegelstadt Trio displays his brilliant understanding of how to write for all three instruments involved. It is a playful work, full of colour and energy. Pianist Robert Markham brought lightness of touch to some dazzling passage work and the ensemble and between the three players evidenced a real shared understanding.

This was an utterly delightful conclusion to a concert that was never less than fascinating.

Oliver Janes – Clarinet

Christopher Yates – Viola

Robert Markham - Piano