Trio Noga in a new program at the Teiva hall in Jaffa, Israel

Photo: Avi Bar-Eitan

Trio Noga - Idit Shemer-flute, Orit Messer-Jacobi-'cello and Maggie Cole-piano (USA/UK) -  has recently toured Israel with a new program. This writer attended the trio’s latest concert at the Teiva hall in Jaffa, Israel, on October 29th, 2018.

 

The program opened with Joseph Haydn’s Trio in D-major Hob. XV:24, one of the three XV:24-26 flute trios written on Haydn’s second visit to London and dedicated to Rebecca Schroeter, the widow of a composer, to whom he had taught piano on his first visit there. The composer and his student  developed an intimate relationship (she was referred to by Haydn as “a beautiful and lovable woman, whom I would very readily have married if I had been free then”); her letters to Haydn survive. This trio, however, is not one of the composer’s typically exuberant or humorous works, rather a somewhat introverted piece, its opening movement juxtaposing small motives with pauses and longer, more flowing phrases. Maggie Cole’s playing gave both spirited and eloquent expression to Haydn’s piano part, writing evident of the more extensive potential of pianos in London of the time. The artists’ performance of the trio was poignant and subtle, articulate in fine detail and well contrasted, with some tasteful embellishment in the flute part. With the flute’s popularity in London at the time, it makes much sense to hear the piece as originally scored and not, as sometimes heard, with the flute’s mellifluous signature sound replaced by a violin. As to the enigmatic finale - Allegro ma dolce - with its energetic course seemingly ignoring bar-lines, the movement’s final notes die away to a hush, as Haydn delicately bows out of the scene.

 

Israeli-born composer/singer Ayala Asherov writes in a wide variety of styles — pop, contemporary classical, etc.— and for various kinds of media, from music for cinema to concert music. “Seasons” was composed in 2010 in the USA, where she spent 15 years. Referring back to her own cultural roots, Asherov took inspiration for the work from four poems of Israeli poet laureate Chaim Nahman Bialik, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poetry. Winning her the 2011 Chamber Music Composition Award at the biennial Athena Music Festival, “Seasons” is a set of tone poems of a lyrical and rhapsodic character, the pieces’ profuse melodies, stirring and emotional, making for music that reaches out to the listener. Preceding each of the pieces, Asherov gave a fine reading of the relevant Bialik poem; listening to her, one was reminded that, earlier in her professional life, Asherov had briefly pursued an acting career in theatre, film and television. The tone poems, each descriptive of a season, are personal in utterance. The Trio Noga artists gave a splendidly sculptured, varied and intuitive reading of the pieces, as “Summer” opened with flute and piano (with Cole making generous use of the sustaining pedal) creating a pastel, dreamlike balmy setting. In “Autumn”, flute and ‘cello duet converse against floating piano arpeggios, evoking the season’s underlying melancholy. The rich mix of textures of “Winter” create some driving rhythms and dramatic content, gripping and intense, the artists' playing never muscular in approach, to be followed by “Spring”, with its forthright opening, fresh and replete with the joy of the re-awakening of nature. Each piece ended on a contemplative note, a personal statement on the part of the composer. Trio Noga’s programming invariably includes works of contemporary Israeli composers.

 

Then to Trio for Flute, ‘Cello, & Piano (1995) by French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator Jean Françaix (1912-1997), known for his varied output and vigorous style. A prolific composer, rejecting atonality and not interested to be a part of Europe’s modernist upheavals that were reshaping musical thinking in a dramatic way, Françaix remained faithful to his own musical language, “not primarily attracted by the ‘motorways of thought’, but more the ‘paths through the woods”, in his own words. Reflecting the influence of Chabrier, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Poulenc, he wrote in an idiom intended to entertain himself and his listeners. From the Jaffa concert, I would add that his style also amuses those performing his music. Light-hearted and humorous, the four-movement Trio for Flute, ‘Cello, & Piano is packed with jazzy moments and jaunty, quirky effects skillfully woven into the composer’s energetic flow of ideas and surprises, the work also revealing Françaix’ skilled contrapuntal- and harmonic writing set within his typically transparent and French  soundscape. The Trio Noga players probed the score in fine detail, meeting its challenges and unconventional techniques (Françaix himself was a virtuoso pianist), with the ‘cello, for example, required to play in high positions, glissandi, flageolets, etc., and with each player often engaged in different agendas. Indeed, humorous music of this kind demands a serious musical approach, as in the droll ⅝ third movement (Scherzando), complete with giggles, or the hopping, no-less-droll fourth movement in which Shemer changes flute for piccolo.

 

The concert concluded with a touching performance of Avi Bar-Eitan’s arrangement of Oded Lerer’s familiar melody “I Ask for Forgiveness” to a poem of Lea Goldberg. Jerusalem composer, teacher and musicologist Avi Bar-Eitan’s doctoral work was an evaluation of the grey area between art-, folk- and popular elements in Israeli song repertoire. The artists’ mellow and sympathetic playing of the lush, melodious and richly-layered textures of the arrangement made for a tranquil and rewarding end to the evening.

…”If there were torments – then they voyaged toward you
my white sail on course toward your dark night.
Now, allow me to leave, let me go, let me go
to bow on the shores of forgiveness.”
© 1959, Lea Goldberg
From: Sooner or Later [Mukdam Ve-Meuhar], 10th ed.
Publisher: Sifriat Poalim, 1959, 1978