The image of speeded-up flower photography kept popping into my mind Saturday night as I watched the chamber-music wünder trio of Finckel, Han and Shifrin perform Beethoven, Bruch and Brahms at the Southern Theatre.
Awww, isn't that special -- flowers blooming in Petric's depraved mind.
Mock me, mock me not. I don't care. It's true, and it began as David Finckel (cello), Wu Han (piano) and David Shifrin (clarinet) opened with a rather airy piece, Ludwig van's Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11.
It was light on its feet and damn cheerful -- irrepressibly cheerful -- especially the Allegro section. But the little ideas the three planted and sprouted amongst each other unfailingly turned into gentle curly cues of atmosphere-tickling melodies.
A beyond-belief Van Gogh-ness emerged during their reading of Beethoven's Adagio section. Its slightly sly thoughtfulness, slow yet steady in its upward flow, made the melodic lines gently smack you in the imagination, as if to say, "Looky here, we were planted 64 bars ago and have now sprung up to full bloom for your seated pleasure, so enjoy, sucker!"
God, but they played with delicate, easy precision. And freakin' Finckel -- he of the David Niven profile -- provided yet more proof that the cello is the most expressive instrument in the Western canon. If you can appreciate Clapton's continental sustain or Duane Allman's sky-caressing slide, you can find fertile listening in Finckel's playing.
The trio's reading of Max Bruch's Nocturne and Andante amounted to some of the loveliest and most gracefully haunting music I've ever heard. Shifrin's clarinet and Han's piano counter-posed currents to Finckel's cello, and never were all three in motion together. Their lines meandered to and fro as they went up and down the scale, not in unison but always with a swaying, casual harmony.
Things weren't mellow-yellow throughout. Energetic bursts of jaunty giddiness marked the ending of Bruch's Allegro, and Brahms's Trio in A Minor provided room for tension as well as harmonic detente. It was enough to make the excitable Han even more so, to the extent that she jumped several inches from her piano stool and sent her black hair flying.
What a fantastic night.
