Bollington Chamber Concerts, Donald Judge

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Saturday night’s outstanding concert by the Linos Trio was given, for the very lucky, in the ideal ambience and acoustic of Bollington Arts Centre, and, as Nicholas Parsons used to say in Just a Minute: Across the world! Literally, from Canada to Hong Kong via Argentina and Manchester.

All three members of the Trio spoke engagingly and informatively about the music, some of which may have been unfamiliar, especially in piano trio form. Far from needing to be justified, the Steibelt starter was an inspired choice to precede Beethoven’s Ghost Trio… The trio’s treatment of rhythm, phrasing, characterisation, and dynamics was immediately striking. It would be fascinating to hear their upcoming recordings using pianos of the era (which developed rapidly in Classical times) but the range of colours and dynamics Thai-born pianist Prach Boondiskulchok coaxed from a modern boudoir grand was astonishing, backed by his colleagues, London-born German-Brazilian violinist Konrad Elias-Trostmann and French-born cellist Vladimir Waltham. An ensemble as international as the concert’s audience!

“What makes the Linos Trio so excellent? To start with they have been playing together and recording regularly for at least a decade… Their musical development has been enhanced by collaborating on arrangements prepared themselves. The give and take, eye contact and indeed physical movement that enhance rather than distract, all make for chamber music that sounds at once meticulously prepared yet spontaneous.”

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… The Linos strings waxed lyrical about Fanny Hensel’s Trio before and after… Fanny being limited by societal and family pressures despite the more enlightened view of her husband Herr Hensel, and her music even being purloined by her brother, should upset everyone – and thank goodness for an era that is still rectifying such issues.

… The next work the Linos played was a very popular orchestral number, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… Losing some of the orchestral colour was compensated for by the opportunity to fit this vividly descriptive music into the Arts Centre, and by the now familiar range of colour and dynamics the Linos Trio excels at.

… the comforting sweetness at the end of a feast of music was a piece Ravel originally wrote for piano and then arranged himself for chamber orchestra, to include a spectacular horn solo. Linos’ own arrangement of Pavane pour une infante défunte was perfect for a cold evening warmed by beautiful music… Ravel told another pianist it was a pavane (a slow dance in duple metre) for a dead princess, not a dead pavane for a living one.

“Linos seemed, as with everything else on the menu, to get it spot on.”