For Your Birthday, Make It the Kalichstein - Laredo - Robinson Trio

It was snow day for most Washingtonians and Washingtoniettes last Saturday, but a few braved the perilous flake(s) and found their way to the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, where the organizers of the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts decided to present… themselves. The Kalichstein – Laredo – Robinson Trio (pianist Joseph Kalichstein is the artistic director of the Fortas Concerts) paid double homage to the two big ‘birthday boys’ this year: Shostakovich and Mozart. Playing the bridge between the two was Arvo Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio (Washington Post, February 13)

Shostakovich’s Trio No. 1 was played like one might play Fauré, softly even where violent, with Sharon Robinson providing a singing tone, Kalichstein adding the playfulness of a mobile. All of which seems appropriate in a teenager’s love letter, of the sort the C minor, op. 18, is. The Mozart-Pärt hybrid was a gratifying combination of the two soundworlds and an appropriate introduction to the B-flat major trio, K. 502: pleasant throughout, perfectly delightful. Which is sometimes all music need or should be.

The second trio of DSCH’s is very emotional, too, but whereas its younger sibling was a love letter, this one is a letter of loss and goodbye; it commemorates the untimely passing of a colleague and friend of Shostakovich. It’s phenomenal fun to listen to, all the same, and this performance only further accentuated the light and flowing side, not the probing aggression or grief. There is, thankfully, no one way to play this trio and well played as was the KLR’s, it entertained mightily. Thirty years into their collaboration, these three artists give no sign of slowing down: good for us as we can only hope that they present themselves a bit more often at the Kennedy Center.