Music at Paxton: Mithras Trio
The Mithras Trio are an impressive group. Only five years after Ionel Marciu, violin, Leo Popplewell, cello, and Dominic Degavino, piano, got together at the Guildhall School of Music, they have gathered many awards and are in their second season as BBC New Generation Artists. Their performance is confident and stylish, and like the best chamber groups they are obviously supportive of each other.
For their lunchtime concert on the Paxton Festival’s last day, they’ve chosen three pieces of music, each written late in the composer’s career. Mozart’s Piano Trio in D Minor K542 was composed in 1788, a year after the success of Don Giovanni. The piano begins the rather wistful theme of the Allegro first movement, and at first the melody is shared with the violin, with the cello playing accompaniment. Later the cello joins the others in the development with the instruments entering in turn, echoing each other’s phrases. The Andante second movement is gentler and dance-like with dotted rhythms, while the final movement begins with its simple theme played on the piano and contains some dazzling displays by piano and violin. The cello is silent at times in this work, and it is noticeable how Leo Popplewell listens with enjoyment while the others are playing.
Lili Boulanger’s short piece ‘D’un Matin de Printemps’ (Of a spring morning) is a spiky and bracing contrast, composed a year before she died aged 24. A child prodigy in a musical family, she could play piano, cello and violin, and she seems to give each instrument the chance to show off in this cheerful witty work. We hear that it went down a treat at the Paxton Children’s Concert when the Mithras Trio came to the rescue as late stand-ins.
Fauré lived to be 79, and the Piano Trio in D Minor is his penultimate work. He feared he had lost his inspiration but it’s full of melodic invention and was well-received at its premiere on his 78th birthday. The cello introduces the flowing subject, and the three instruments play together for most of the movement, first one and then the other taking up the legato theme with the others weaving around it. The Andantino is calmer, and for a while the piano plays a rippling accompaniment while the cello and violin play the theme apparently in unison – in fact, an octave apart – Manciu and Popplewell creating a lovely sonorous effect here. The strings play the slow declamatory opening to the last movement, until the piano starts in an off-beat faster rhythm. The competing speeds provide an energetic tension until the work concludes in a celebratory mood.
The members of the Mithras Trio all follow promising individual careers, with violinist Ionel Manciu newly appointed as concert master of the Netherlands Philharmonic. Let’s hope that they continue to find time to play chamber music of this high standard.
