Tchaikovsky Piano Trio Number 3 in A minor, Opus 50 (The Macquarie Trio, July 29 )


 (painting inspired by a Canberra performance/interpretation of on July 29  2002, in the Fairfax Theatre
 of the National Gallery of Australia. See commentary below image)
 Painting by Wayne Roberts, 148cm x 148 cm.  Medium: sumi ink and acrylic on Montval paper.
The Macquarie Trio, artist's impression of their performance of the Tchaikovsky Trio Opus 50

The Macquarie Trio is amongst the best you will hear in music. My wife and I have enjoyed many of their concerts usually held in the main theatre at the National Gallery. Kathryn Selby, piano; Nicholas Milton, violin; and Michael Goldschlager, cello, are three outstanding Australian musicians! On 29 July 2002, they transfigured the incredibly difficult Tchaikovsky Trio in A minor Opus 50 into a Rodin-like sculpture-of-sound. If you closed your eyes for a moment, an orchestral 4th dimension soared over the tri-dimensional sound, so monumental were the chromatic textures woven into this most innovative of Tchaikovsky's melodic experimentations. The overarching aural wave thundered from piano then in a lightning-tracery of frenzied bowing and syncopated cadences tossed its lyrical curve and angles back to the black grand for more thunder. All this masterfully transposed into the utmost sensitivity and tenderness, the work ending quietly, vanishingto the zenith of the zero.

Yet their mastery is not merely of technique. It is as if this trio is an instrument itself. That complex unity cannot be experienced except during the concerts, in the midst of the performance. Here is 'seen' a trio, and yet these three are transposed into one 'instrument'. This trio is without doubt one of the very best this country has known or is likely to know.

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