Music / This Mirror Has Three Faces, Selby & Friends. At Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, May 16. Reviewed by NICK HORN.

Kristian Winther, a violinist with a strong Canberra pedigree, and American cellist Clancy Newman joined pianist Kathryn Selby before an appreciative audience in this intimate venue to demonstrate the potential of the piano trio form in three aspects.

They were: Lera Auerbach’s eldritch imaginings, Robert Schumann’s struggle to reconcile light and dark, and a powerful cry of grief from Bedřich Smetena.

Newman introduced Auerbach’s Piano Trio No. 2 (This Mirror Has Three Faces) with a story of his encounter with the New York-based composer, a Russian emigrant, in which she told him that “something is always wrong” in her music. It certainly is warped! 

We are blown sideways and back by swooping glissandi, high harmonics and other exotic string techniques expertly executed by Winther and Newman; the music is dramatic and fragmentary, with mysterioso gothic effects, rolling bass passages, delicately pianissimo and furiously forte moments.

Demons are summoned early in an angry, twisting waltz – reminiscent of work by that Australian Russian emigrant, Elena Kats-Chernin – only to be put to rest as the trio converges surprisingly on a beautiful lyrical subject at the conclusion.

There was nothing wrong with the trio’s playing: it was utterly compelling, with virtuoso performances from each of the Three Faces of this composer’s (or is it this audience’s?) folding mirror.

Schumann’s 3rd Piano Trio may be written in a more familiar language, but it shares a similar anxious intensity. The initial theme rolls over like a deep purple cloud bank, before a sunny second subject breaks through.

Throughout, the mood swings between light and shade, clouds scudding across the sky. A slow movement starts warmly (Newman’s gorgeous cello tone), then darkens dramatically, driven by the piano.The scherzo is built around a sprightly melody with contrasting trio sections.

Finally, the trio knits memories of previous themes together with grand statements, and the work concludes with Selby in sensitive dialogue with the strings.

Smetana’s deeply passionate piano trio was composed in response to the death of his four-year-old daughter.

Winther enters first with a stirring solo statement, followed by bravura pianism from Selby signalling the composer’s debt to Franz Liszt, gathering force until suddenly displaced by a yearning theme from the cello. 

Moments of tenderness come and go in an agitated, disturbed texture. The scherzo introduces a playful theme, albeit tinged with sadness. The voices of the trio come together seamlessly in fugal conversation, each member listening intently to the other. The third movement arrives at the gallop, evoking – as Selby related, while introducing the piece – a child’s flight from the malevolent Erl-King (King of the Elves) of northern European myth.

This is followed with an aching song of mourning on the cello, with some finely ornamented work on the piano. A funeral march ensues, and we are left with the echo of that gallop, a reminder that none can escape Death’s relentless pursuit.