Ottawa Citizen, Canada
July 29 2006

Musicians make these pieces engaging

Unknown Piano Trios was the name of yesterday’s afternoon Chamberfest
concert at Dominion Chalmers Church. Featuring the music of the
equally unknown composers Arno Babajanian and Carl Fruhling, the
program wasn’t expected to draw a large crowd.

However, between the reputation of the Duke Trio, the air
conditioning at Dominion Chalmers and the fact that the concert was
free to pass holders, the audience counted something like 500 souls.

Babajanian, according to armeniapedia.org, was a distinguished
20th-century composer, a USSR People’s Artist and a laureate of the
State Award of Armenia. His dates were 1921-1983. He wrote music in
many genres including popular music and film scores.

His Trio is a sophisticated and powerful work that should be heard
often. Although its idiom is far from easy-listening, neither is it
avant-garde.

The Duke Trio’s members, pianist Peter Longworth, violinist Mark
Fewer and cellist Thomas Wiebe not only play well together, but
regularly enough that one never gets the sense of three competing
personalities trying to make sense of the music.

Fruhling, whose trio opened the program comes from an earlier era,
1868-1937, and seems to be known today almost entirely for his Trio
in A minor, op. 40, originally for clarinet, cello and piano, but
yesterday played by a regular piano trio (with a violin replacing the
clarinet.)

It’s a well-crafted piece, of which two movements slightly exceed in
length what they offer in interest. However, it was generally
engaging, which probably says as much about the commitment of the
players as to the composer’s undoubted talents.

Russian String Quartets

St. Matthew’s in the Glebe was the venue last evening for the Moscow
String Quartet’s final appearance in this year’s Chamberfest. The
program included quartets by Shostakovich, Schnittke and Tchaikovsky.

If one were to divide Shosta-kovich’s works into periods, as we do
with Beethoven, the Quartet no. 4 in D, op. 83 would be a
middle-period work. In fact, the composer was in early middle-age
when he wrote the First Quartet and that is why even the earliest of
them are mature masterworks.

The Moscow String Quartet, not surprisingly, knows this repertoire
well and, being the terrific ensemble it is, can put it across most
convincingly. While the entire performance was superb, the last
movement in particular had a deep feeling of summing up and
resolution.

Alfred Schnittke, a generation younger than Shostako-vich, is widely
regarded as having inherited the latter composer’s primacy in the
world of Russian/Soviet music. His music is still challenging for
today’s audiences in much the way that Shostakovich’s was 40 years
ago.

Whatever difficulties listeners had with the Moscow account of his
Quartet no. 2, it seems likely most were aware they were hearing
great music performed by some of the greatest of musicians.