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Polished Chrome – Haydn
in top Form
Review of Haydn Flute Trios performed by Classical Chrome
Critic : Rod Biss in Sunday Star Times , Auckland , 7th December 2003
This disc is a delight – make a note of it as a potential Christmas Gift
for anyone
interested in 18th-Century music . And intriguingly , although it’s by a
major composer ,
Joseph Haydn , the chances
are you’ve never heard it before.
The artists , Classical Chrome – Douglas Mews , Penelope Evison , and
Euan Murdoch –
are a polished New Zealand
Group which specialises in performing music
of the baroque and classical periods on authentic instruments . The
“Chrome” in their
name refers not to their
undoubted polish but to the chromatic colour they find in the
music they perform . Their
aim , they say , is “to refresh the colours of this music , allowing
it to speak with its own
voice on period instruments” , and they succeed brilliantly .
Mews is a sensitive fortepiano player who gets beautifully shaded
phrases and
accompaniment figures from
the modern reproduction of the Viennese instrument of 1798
which he plays . Evison
provides an elegant , honey-toned top line on the six-keyed flute ,
which is also a
reproduction of a period instrument . Murdoch’s cello line , played on a
genuine
classical cello of 1770 is
always tactful and alert in the way he moves from background to
foreground , from bass
line to inner part to melody . The trios are recorded in the Adam
Concert
Room at Victoria
University ; it’s a reasonably dry acoustic but the recording engineers
found an
appropriate amount of
liveliness and have also kept the natural clarity .
These trios all date from the composer’s maturity in the early 1790s ,
which was when he was
writing the London
symphonies that most people know well . Dates are important here as they
tell that you can expect
exciting use of sonata form in the first movements , with quite lengthy
and discursive development
sections .
The slow movements of the first and third trios are charming and
delicate , more in keeping
with earlier Haydn , and
the finales of the third trio is particularly light-hearted and
infectious ,
a track that speeds past
leaving you breathless and reaching for the replay button . The second
trio is a more slender
two-movement work but no less valuable than its companions .
These three trios are so poised and sophisticated , yet also instantly
appealing , that it is hard
to understand why there
have been seldom heard in the concert hall . The answer I imagine , is
the unusual combination of
instruments – much less common that the string quartet or the piano
trio with violin . But the
sound of these three instruments is ideal for listening to at home – the
dimensions of the sound
seem to be perfectly suited to a present-day living room – so why wait?
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