NZTrio and Emma Pearson: Strauss reimagined in gold and light

The NZTrio, joined by soprano Emma Pearson, presented a thoughtful and wonderfully played programme at the Auckland Town Hall’s Concert Chamber which largely focused on female composers. It moved from the bold, folksy storytelling of Elena Kats-Chernin to the fragile beauty of Salina Fisher, ending with a new and intimate arrangement by the latter of Strauss’ Four Last Songs.

Kats-Chernin’s The Spirit and the Maiden opened the programme in a burst of rhythmic energy. Folk-inflected melodies and furious string passages flashed over Somi Kim’s rippling piano arpeggios, telling the story of a young girl’s fatal love for a water spirit. The NZTrio relished the physicality of this music, with bold accents and vibrant interplay between Amalia Hall’s violin and Matthias Balzat’s cello. If anything, the second movement was even more aggressive, with the three players achieving a surprisingly robust pesante sound. A reflective final slow movement and its brief, exhilarating coda rounded off a vivid miniature drama.

By contrast, Fisher’s Kintsugi seemed to draw the room into stillness, inspired by the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. The NZTrio, who originally commissioned it, played with rapt concentration, each fragment of sound placed with care; one could almost see the veins of gold amidst the ceramic. Sparse musical gestures blossomed into harmonies, then disappeared again into silence. 

Two songs from Amy Beach’s Op.100 followed, A Mirage and Stella Viatoris, as the trio was joined by Emma Pearson, singing with supple phrasing and clear attention to the text. Her warm middle register served Beach’s late-Romantic idiom beautifully, and she met the wider range and emotional breadth of Stella Viatoris with assurance. In Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, Pearson’s tone floated upwards in seamless arcs, equally adept at the wordless.

The concert’s second half centred on Salina Fisher’s chamber arrangement of Strauss’ Four Last Songs, which proved both daring and illuminating. Without a full orchestra, the transparency of the string trio and piano revealed unexpected lines and inner voices. Fisher’s reduction allowed Pearson to phrase with freedom and intimacy, her bright soprano ideally suited to the clarity of this smaller ensemble. Balzat’s role was also key, carrying lower and inner melodies with flexibility and warmth. In Frühling, the absence of Strauss’ radiant string introduction was at first startling, but soon the new textures took on their own appealing clarity. Pearson’s tone was fresh and pearly, though the lowest notes lay just below her natural comfort zone. September brought a hushed melancholy; her shading and the control of her diminuendi capturing the core of the poem.

Beim Schlafengehen was the emotional highlight of the evening. Hall’s glowing violin solo rose gorgeously before the soprano’s re-entry, her long line sustained with astonishing breath control. The piano’s arpeggios were a decent substitute for Strauss’ harp. In Im Abendrot, Pearson conveyed serene acceptance, her final question of death delivered not in fear but rapt wonder. If the piano’s tinkling close could not quite replace Strauss’s luminous woodwinds, the quality of the emotional involvement was undeniable. Pearson stood visibly moved as it ended.