Trio in C, K548 - Mozart
Trio in D minor, Op 120 - Faure
Trio in A minor - Tchaikovsky
A romantic moon presided over Carton demesne for the first concert in this year's AIB Music in Great Houses Festival. It was a distinctly 19th-century moon, for although Mozart was on the programme, the players made little attempt to convey the feeling of Mozart's time.
The piano, it is true, had a proper reticence, but violin and cello seemed to be chafing at the bit, and it was with the enthusiasm of a hungry dog who finds a meaty bone that the players launched themselves into the voluptuousness of Faure's trio in D minor.
Faure's music often seems more inclined to disguise passion than disclose it, but in this performance there could be no doubting the wholeheartedness and intensity of the composer's inspiration.
Finished in the composer's 78th year, it is an extraordinary outburst of youthful spirits and the Frank/Pauk/ Kirshbaum Trio missed no opportunity to make its message loud and clear.
Tchaikovsky's Trio in A minor is less tightly constructed and offers many moments when the instrumentalists can justifiably show off.
Particularly in the Theme and Variations of the second movement, its roots in popular music give it an instant appeal but its relentless high spirits, in spite of the concluding funeral march, can pall.
The players avoided the trap of too much grandiloquence and preserved a sympathetic balance between the instruments at the same time as making a satisfyingly big sound.
