Guarneri Trio of Prague, Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, 02 May 2024.5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Ruff.

Guarneri Trio of Prague, Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, 02 May 2024.

5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Ruff.

“Old friends return to Nottingham’s Lakeside.”

The Guarneri Trio is remarkable for many reasons, not least for the fact that the three founding members are still playing together after 38 years. On Thursday they were welcomed back to Lakeside as much-loved friends after an absence (Covid largely to blame) of five years. They made their first appearance at the venue in 1996 and this concert marked their 21st visit.

At the heart of their programme lay Beethoven’s Piano Trio op.70, no 1, the so-called ‘Ghost’ Trio. The origins of this nickname remain obscure (nothing to do with Beethoven himself) but it may have been because of the eerie, spectral quality of the slow movement (which happens to be the slowest slow movement in the whole of Beethoven). The Guarneris relished its weirdly fragmented themes, unstable harmonies and sombre textures with eerie tremolos emerging from the bowels of the piano. All this combined to produce music of huge tension and the sort of gloom associated with Gothic castles emerging from mist.

Their handling of the outer movements was just as adept: the explosive opening of the first movement and the highly charged, volatile nature of what ensues, as well as the abrupt contrasts of texture and dynamics. In the finale they were equally successful at capturing a rather more normal world of elegance and whimsical humour, their razor-sharp timing making the most of the main theme’s subtle hesitations.

They started their concert with Mozart’s charming Piano Trio, K.564. The Guarneri Trio know each other and the music so well that the passing of phrases from one to the other seemed the most natural thing in the world, intentions and responses almost the stuff of telepathy. This was nowhere more apparent than in the central set of variations, in which each short section was vividly characterised. The end of the finale was a joy, with each player answering his colleagues not only with wit but also with a hint that more lay under the calm surface than met the ear.

After the interval came Mendelssohn’s Trio, Op.66, a work which opens with a tempestuous theme consisting of huge surges of rising and falling notes. The Guarneris handled the dark urgency of the music with a fine sense of drama. They were equally convincing in the second movement’s ‘song without words’ and in the scherzo, the sort of lighter-than-air music which makes one think of Mendelssohn’s writing for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The finale erupted with passionate energy and everything which followed (right through to the climactic statement of the chorale that crowns the movement) was notable for the technical deftness of the players and their perfectly judged responses to the music’s mercurial changes of mood.

Two delightful encores followed: some (unfamiliar) Rheinberger and some (very familiar) Dvorak. Everyone present will now be looking forward to the Guarneri Trio’s 22nd visit.

Guarneri Trio of Prague: Čeněk Pavlík (Violin), Marek Jerie (Cello), Ivan Klánský (Piano)