Neave Trio: Rooted
Chandos

An inspired concept underscores Rooted, the sixth album from Neave Trio members violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura. However unusual it might initially seem to combine material by Josef Suk, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Bedrich Smetana, and Frank Martin on an album, the fact that they composed trios steeped in the folk traditions and cultural history of different countries establishes a connecting link between them. As is always the case, in writing music of a deeply personal character the four at the same time created material that resonates universally.

On the one hand, we have Smetana (1824-84), the so-called “father of Czech music,” and his Czech colleague Suk (1874-1935), while on the other we have Swiss composer Martin (1890-1974), who spent much of his life in the Netherlands, and the great American composer Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), whose work drew from his African heritage. The works represented by the four on Rooted are: Smetana's Piano Trio, Op. 15 in G minor (1855, revised 1857); Suk's Petit Trio, Op. 2 in C minor (1889, revised 1890-91); Martin's Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises (1925); and Coleridge-Taylor's Five Negro Melodies for Piano Trio (from Twenty-four Negro Melodies, Op. 59 No. 1, for Solo Piano) (c. 1905).

Such an inspired programme not only has immense musical appeal but also works superbly to the trio's advantage in enabling the group to demonstrate its versatility. As earlier releases by Neave Trio feature the group performing material by Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Brahms, Beach, Debussy, Fauré, Korngold, Bernstein, and and Rebecca Clarke, the seventy-six-minute Rooted upholds the trio's penchant for imaginative programming. Fourteen years after its 2010 formation, the group continues to forge compelling new paths.

While Smetana's best known for Má vlast and The Bartered Bride, his Trio in G minor bears his distinctive signature too. Composed two months after the 1855 death of his four-year-old daughter from scarlet fever, the almost half-hour work possesses an understandably tragic dimension whilst also reflecting a strong Liszt influence. That solemn quality is evident the moment solo violin introduces the first movement with an expressive chromatic melody and in the emphatic trio episode that follows. An abrupt shift in tone occurs, however, when the music turns tender, the violin's heartfelt ache perhaps intimating a deceased child being fondly remembered. Agitation and restlessness permeate the movement, with dramatic changes in tone mirroring the turmoil of a parent forced to deal with devastating tragedy. Livelier by comparison is the central “Allegro,” which dances with the carefree joy of youth and in its happier moments suggests images of Smetana's innocently playing daughter; in a subsequent part, the music grows poignant as if in anticipation of the tragedy to come. The finale begins with great urgency and rhythmic insistence, but here too change occurs when propulsion is exchanged for repose and lyrical splendour, and the trio brings the work to a gorgeous close with exceptionally expressive playing by all three members.

Coleridge-Taylor's Five Negro Melodies for Piano Trio exemplifies the composer's deep engagement with his African heritage and is arguably the release's most instantly endearing work for its powerful melodic content. The familiar strains of “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” are as irresistible here as they are in any other context, especially when the plaintive song's delivered in a gentle lilt and the strings voice the lament with such feeling. The instruments are perfectly suited to such material when they're so capable of evoking the sound of a human voice, whether it be the rousing affirmations of “My Lord delivered Daniel,” the sorrowful expressions in “They will not lend me a child,” or the heartfelt outpourings of “I was way down a-yonder.” Elements of hymns and gospel songs emerge to make the work all the more alluring.

While Suk was not only a favourite pupil of Dvorak''s but married his daughter too, he didn't slavishly copy his elder but instead produced works that genuinely expressed his own personality, his Petit Trio, Op. 2 a case in point. Replete with assertive folk-melody gestures, an energized allegro initiates the work with lucidity, arresting modulations, and romantic purpose. The central andante seduces immediately with its gentle rhythms and pretty melodic flourishes, after which the vivacious closing movement resolves the work with effervescent rhythms and an occasional foray into introspection. Rooted concludes with Martin's trio, which is based on traditional Irish folk melodies and which he composed at Capbreton in south-west France in 1925. Those sinuous melodies intoxicate the moment the exuberant “Allegro moderato” introduces the work; the central “Adagio” is memorable for different reasons, its fragile hush for one and its poised interplay between the three players for another. Folk melodies leap to the fore for the closing “Gigue. Allegro,” the radiant, jig-packed movement providing an uplifting exit to the release.

July 2024