Trio Finlandia impresses local music lovers

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): Some time ago in the Kompas daily, there appeared a lengthy piece and interview with one of Indonesia's major orchestra conductors in which he deplored reviewers of classical music events.

The gist of his message was that they don't know much about the music they write about.

He may have had a point, but then comes the question: does a reviewer have to know every work written by, say, Ravel, Mozart, Janacek or whoever?

My feeling is that if someone determined -- or crazy enough -- to become a reviewer sets out to learn all the concertos, operas, quartets, oratorios , symphonies, etc., he or she would never have a moment free to go to a performance, let alone write about it.

However, if you hear (and listen to!) musical pieces often enough you begin to recognize styles, turns-of-phrases, harmonic combinations and resolutions, even technical elements, all of which help you make a pretty good guess as to who is, or was, responsible for a piece you'd never heard before.

That's how it was with me last Wednesday at Erasmus Huis, at the concert that featured Trio Finlandia with Marita Viitasalo at the piano, violinist Eeva Koskinen and Riita Pesola on cello.

Of the three compositions played, I knew one quite well (by Mendelssohn), the other vaguely (Sibelius), and nothing of the third (Shostakovich).

This does not mean that I am totally in the dark about all three composers and their works.

Sibelius' C-Major trio, also known as the Lovisa Trio, is a work that I heard such a long time ago and not even at a proper performance, but by a trio of advanced students going through the work at a rehearsal.

I don't think that much is known in this country about Sibelius, although the melody of the magnificent chorale of his monumental tone poem, Finlandia, has been adopted by practically all church choirs who -- as church choirs will -- mangle it beyond recognition.

There is nothing small about the compositions Sibelius wrote. Even the short Valse Triste, played as an encore by the trio, breathes an expansiveness that marks all his works, including the C-Major trio.

Banned

But when listening to his music and noting the somberness of it, you can't help wondering how representative it is of the Finnish psyche.

After all, Sibelius, more than anything, is a thoroughly nationalist composer whose above mentioned chorale was banned from performances when Russia was still the major power in the country (Finland became an independent country in 1917, and the concert at Erasmus Huis was in commemoration of the country's 80th anniversary).

But that matters little. There's such grandeur even in the melancholic overtones in his compositions -- large or small -- that it is impossible not to get caught up and be impressed by it.

Still, I prefer his second symphony best, if only because of the lighter, more amiable tone in the first movement.

Shostakovich's trio (Op. 8, no.1) is the one I have never heard before.

I am familiar with some of his works, but these are of a larger format (symphonic), among them the preludes and fugues for piano solo.

Hence, the trio opened up new vistas, especially in regard to his chamber music. It was written in 1923, about 20 years before the Soviet government pounced on him for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mizensk, which Pravda described as vulgar and coarse.

Shostakovich wrote the trio when he was 17 years old, perhaps well before the hardships of life caught up with him, but even so, some of the aspects were already present like brittleness, biting harmonies and dark moods.

Now to Mendelssohn's trio. Quite well known, but here, too, the Finlandia Trio (all women, by the way) gave a reading that I was not used to.

The first movement is marked Molto allegro agitato, and I have to admit that for the first bar or two I felt a bit uncomfortable, being used to a slightly faster tempo.

But then, very slowly, it began to dawn on me that what the trio played could be described as belonging to the category of Lieder -- the art song that was brought to flower by the likes of Schubert and Schumann.

Mendelssohn, too, was a master in that field (witness On Wings of Song and oratorios), and one only has to hear the Scherzo -- related to the third movement of the violin concerto as well as the similarly named excerpt of the Midsummer Night's Dream -- to know that it couldn't be anyone else but Mendelssohn who had written it.

So much for the works played by the Trio Finlandia. What about interpretation?

Well, on glancing at the program one's mind automatically associates it with the periods and the styles in vogue during those eras, as well as the composer's country of origin, ethnicity, and other typical characteristics that could have been of influence.

Then the music comes. Now, if all those matters (period, styles, ethnicity, etc.) are still lurking somewhere among the gray cells, the performance may well be good, but could perhaps be much better.

Whatever I have just written was all in retrospect because at the concert I was too engrossed in the magnificent interpretation to think of anything else, let alone make notes.

One knows instantly when one is in the presence of masters of the art. In short, Trio Finlandia's performance was brilliant.