Two years ago the Linos Piano Trio gave a concert at the Bradfield Festival for which a five star review would have seemed like faint praise. Their concert at this year’s festival did not quite reach those heights, perhaps because lightning never strikes twice in exactly the same place. But perhaps, the repertoire for this 2025 concert did not consist of works of the compelling greatness of the Beethoven and Ravel trios from their previous visit. Nevertheless, there was much to admire and enjoy about this concert, which again revealed the trio to be impeccable musicians and great communicators.
The main work in the first half of the programme was the Piano Trio in D minor, Op.11 by Fanny Mendelssohn. Her brother’s two piano trios don’t appear in concert all that often, but the chance to hear Fanny’s only work for these forces comes along even more rarely, and the Linos Trio engaged with its emotional turbulence, not to mention formidable technical demands (especially for the pianist) in ways that made it clear how much they value it. The first two movements came off best. The opening is bold and defiant, the piano’s flurry of notes revealing a sound world similar to that of Felix, but with a darker and more troubled edge at odds with the allegedly genteel world of the 19th-century female composer. The Andante espressivo second movement was full of imaginative touches, the themes developed in ways far from routine. The radiant warmth of Vladimir Waltham’s cello playing was exceptional here. If the remaining movements lost momentum a little, it was surely not the Linos’ fault, but rather because the music itself becomes somewhat more conventional.
After the interval, there was another composer’s only piano trio, this one by Fauré. This is unarguably a splendid piece of music, but elusive in the manner of so much late Fauré, which explains its infrequent appearance in concert. Pianist Prach Boondiskulchok, introducing the work, explained how the trio could make little sense of the piece on first encountering it, but that they have now grown to cherish its rather cryptic charms. Theirs was a performance full of yearning, the central Andantino, by turns meditative and impassioned, being particularly fine. The violin/cello dialogue, presenting, repeating and subtly varying the movement’s themes, showed how superbly taut and focused the musicianship of this ensemble truly is.
The rest of the concert was devoted to the demonstration of one of the Linos’ main aims as a trio: to perform their own arrangements of music not initially for these forces, in order to enrich the piano trio repertoire. The results, on the basis of this evening’s evidence, are occasionally revelatory, but also occasionally a little routine. The concert began with three of Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, one in an authentic cello-and-piano version, the other two arranged by the Linos Trio, one for violin and piano, the other for the full trio. As an introduction to the evening, the performances had a kind of quiet domesticity that made for a startling contrast with the Fanny Mendelssohn which followed. At the end of the evening, the trio performed their arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. This piano-centred version provided the concert’s least rewarding moments, maybe because Tchaikovsky’s music here relies so heavily on its orchestration to achieve its effects. Still, the musicians’ encore, another Linos arrangement, this time of Ravel’s Pavane, provided a glorious conclusion: limpid, serene, apparently artless but with an innocence achieved by meticulously precise shared engagement. The Linos Piano Trio is a very special ensemble indeed.
