The trio formed by soloists Isabelle Faust, Alexander Melnikov and Jean-Guihen Queyras performed Monday evening in a packed Bourgie Hall, the day after a concert at the Palais Montcalm for the Club musical de Québec. In the evening, around Threesome #1 of Brahms and Threesome #2 by Schumann was marked by a very controlled cohesion and refinement of nuances, for the benefit of a modest and refined expression.
The description of the concert of the Trio Faust, Melnikov, Queyras does not need many words. In a title and an introduction the main things are said. No doubt, however, it is useful to say what this concert was not. These three performers being keen on baroque music and “historically informed” knowledge, one could fear an application of this post-baroque “consciousness” to Schumann and Brahms. In other words, parsimonious management of vibrato, with corseted expressiveness. We, fortunately, did not have that.
Modesty
Faust, Melnikov, Queyras deliberately play the romanticism of Schumann and Brahms. They play it in a sometimes confident manner (Melnikov’s entry in Trio by Brahms) or with soft steps (the Final of Brahms) and there remain from the baroque and classical practice certain “sound games” or certain palettes which go further than those of other trios, for example this sort of striking tension in the last 90 seconds of the 3e movement of 2e Trio by Schumann.
But, as when Gidon Kremer and Krystian Zimerman played the Three Sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms in 2006 at the Club musical de Québec, we are here much more in the search for the fusion of sounds and the subtlety of the interweaving of phrases than in the instrumental joust. This is what undoubtedly justifies the diptych of a day alongside the Epigrams of a century-old Elliott Carter, so many little contrasting sound haikus.
What will remain at the forefront of the evening are above all the extinctions of movements, like in dreams, so precise were they in terms of quality of nuances and instrumental cohesion. We think here of movements 2 and 3 of Schumann and 2 and 3 of Brahms above all. There were also these beautiful passages of consonance or fusion of colors between Faust and Queyras. We felt, watching them, that the musicians were enjoying these moments.
The trio offered the audience the admirable, very silent throughout the concert, slow movement of 3e Schumann trio as an encore.