Colorado Piano Trio: Echoes of Romany

January 31, 2024, 11:07 AM · There are many things I love about my home state of Colorado. The majestic mountains, the kind-hearted people, the fact that you can get a great steak just about anywhere. And now I have one more thing to look forward to when I come home: the Colorado Piano Trio.

The Colorado Trio.

This past weekend I had the good fortune to hear this award-winning ensemble perform music of Mozart, Kodály, and Smetana in a program titled "Echoes of Romany." The repertoire was fascinating and the performances divine. If there was a common thread that tied these three composers together, it was the juxtaposition of utter simplicity and virtuosic fireworks.

No one can make simple into sublime quite like Mozart. During W.A. Mozart's Piano Trio in C, K. 548, pianist Adam Zukiewicz brought forth music so pristine it was as if the notes were made of glass. The clarity and purity of his crystalline playing, coupled with his technical prowess, was a masterclass in understanding Mozart – the confounding conundrum of grappling with the simplicity of his music versus the absolute challenge of playing it well.

Zukiewicz set the performance bar sky-high in the Mozart and his colleagues were more than ready to keep the momentum going in Zoltán Kodály's Duo for Violin & Cello, Op. 7. Let me just say, this piece is a "wow." Violinist Jubal Fulks and cellist Gal Faganel hit it out of the park.

Philip Roth once wrote of famed pianist Yefim Bronfman that he looked more like the guy who should be moving the piano than playing it. Fulks, standing somewhere north of 6'5", looks like he was born to play the string bass. Under his chin, the violin looks like a toy. Yet he is completely at one with his instrument and able to draw from it a rich sound that will reverberate in my mind's ear for a very long time. There is a depth of feeling in his playing that was captivating. Whether he was deftly handling Mozart or digging into Kodály, Fulks was up for the job – always bringing energy and commitment to each note.

As for Faganel, he is simply one of the finest cellists I have ever heard live. He knows how to paint a picture with his agile fingers, flexible bow arm, and expressive visage. When he began the Kodály, his playing went beyond the notes as he took his listeners back to 1914, the year the piece was written, as war loomed. While listening, my mind immediately conjured up an old man in a frayed overcoat, walking through a lonely street, hat in hand, wondering when everything had gone so terribly wrong. How an artist infuses heartbreak into his playing I will never understand. But Faganel can do it. His face is a roadmap of the generations that preceded him, and he carries the weight of his Slovenian homeland in every bow stroke.

Then there was Bedrich Smetana's Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 15, another stunner. The trio coordinated as great chamber musicians should – anticipating each other's movements, letting the music dictate where the spotlight should shine, and listening, listening, listening. I'm glad I didn’t read the program notes before the concert as I’m not sure I could have contained my emotions had I known the inspiration for this piece was the heartbreaking death of Smetana's own 4-year-old daughter. Again, the trio painted a picture in which one could hear the anger, the heartbreak, the mother's sobbing, and the funeral march.

The amount of sound this trio produced was impressive, proclaiming that their version of "chamber music" requires a spacious chamber, which they had in the beautiful First United Methodist Church in Greeley.

On a personal note, while I am familiar with the three composers on this program, I was not familiar with a single piece on it. It is perhaps trite to say I am a better person for having heard this music. Trite, but true. It is the kind of music that has the capacity to shift one’s center of gravity just a bit, so that life is experienced a bit differently. And aren’t we, after all, lucky to be able to move emotionally from where we thought we were, all because some notes entered our ears and made us feel just a bit better about life? And for that, Colorado Piano Trio, I say a heartfelt "thank you."

Note: This concert kicked off the chamber music series of the broader Beethoven in the Rockies festival.

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