TRIO RECITAL

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24335, 14 August 1944, Page 3

TRIO RECITAL

Trios by Haydn, Mozart, and Dvorak formed the programme of an excellent recital given in Begg’s concert hall on Saturday evening. The players were Vivien Dixon, Noel Cape-Wil-liamson, and Frederick Page, who have become well-known as a broadcasting combination, and this, their first public recital, had been eagerly looked forward to. It was unfortunate that it shoulu have clashed with the concert of mid-European music at Canterbury College, as many people were regretting having to miss one or the other. Unfortunate, too. because the trio recital was in so many ways a model of what these things should be. and it deserved a much wider audience. Good chamber music is not something that just happens when several good musicians play together. It needs from them amicable agreement on matters of style, phrasing, and rhythm, complete familiarity with each other’s playing, and the kind of musical sensitivity that makes solo or accompaniment work not a self-conscious obtrusion and withdrawal of tone.. but a subtle merging of instruments into one satisfying texture of sound. All this and much more was evident on Saturday evening, and the audience showed its delight and appreciation by securing as encore a complete repetition of the Haydn. It is to be hoped the players will take this gesture as evidence that another recital would be most welcome.

The Haydn Trio in C minor, whether at its crystal-clear first hearing, sounding like Beerham’s Philharmonic in miniature, or in a slightly heavier and more exhilarating performance after the Dvorak, still contained the most perfectly realised playing of the evening. The Mozart in E major K. 542, which followed, suffered just a little by proximity. Phrasings were not so meticulously exact, and the opening passages sounded almost perfunctory. The players appeared not to have transferred themselves completely from Haydn’s exuberant mood into the reflective and gravely beautiful world of this late Mozart work. Dvorak in F minor. Op. 95, was a welcome contrast, for those at least who like their Dvorak, and this work, especially in its second movement. 1 must suiely contain some of his love- 1 liest writing. Most of it was well conveyed to the audience, and for a few turgid passages and occasional confusion of rhythm, the composer might be partly to blame. Notably in this music, and throughout the evening, the range and delicate gradation of quiet tone was most impressive.