Critic’s Notebook: Superstar Trio on Chamber-Music Tour
Lisa Batiashvili,© Chris Singer
Also published in Die Presse: Kammermusik: Diese Kombo hat es in sich
Lisa Batiashvili, Gautier Capuçon, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet make a better-than expected Trio
It doesn’t always work: superstars doing chamber music in the grand halls of classical music. This combo, though, had something going for itself.
Chamber music in large halls is, on the one hand, a wonderful thing — a sign that this genre, hard to sell but the beating heart of classical music, can still draw a crowd. On the other hand, such music is usually less at home in places like the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus than, in it would be in its smaller, perfectly suited Mozart Hall, for example. But when soloists with the star power of Lisa Batiashvili, Gautier Capuçon and Jean-Yves Thibaudet appear together, compromises must be made.
That this one turned out not to be much of a compromise at all was remarkable — and owed to the trio’s balanced playing. No one held back, no one dominated, there were no hiearchic shenanigans, and no one got lost in precious detail. Whether in the youthful works of the first half — Debussy and Shostakovich’s early trios — or in the second, devoted entirely to Dvořák’s mature F-minor Trio Op. 65 (who was, after all, a venerable 42 when he wrote it).
The Dvořák, cleanly and spiritedly played, served as another reminder that his chamber music never really disappoints — at least not when, as here (no small feat for a team of soloists), the playing is genuinely ensemble-minded: relaxed in the Poco adagio, varied in the finale, and fleet in the Mendelssohn-like scherzo of the encore, which was played entirely in keeping with Dvořák’s spirit.
Even more intriguing were the first two pieces, however, where Batiashvili and Capuçon could truly shine: she full-bodied and rhytmically steady-as-a-rock, he slightly sentimental, bittersweet, elegant — both superbly attuned to each other. That Thibaudet sometimes drifted toward the role of accompanist rather than full creative collaborator, or that his clarity occasionally suffered from the brisk tempos, mattered little at this level of overall excellence.
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