Trinity College Chapel
Tuesday November 11
Rupert Compston (Piano), Hanna Nott (Violin) and David Foster (Violoncello)

Five Stars

It scares any musician to ponder their own insignificance compared to the masters. Debussy wrote this piano trio when he was only eighteen, before he had received any compositional training, and yet this work is wonderfully fresh and filled with tantalising hints of his later grandes oeuvres. It has been disparaged however by critics as ‘falling disappointingly short’ and ‘embarrassingly mechanical’ which only proves what we all knew before: that music critics have no souls.

This all-star trio played to a sizeable audience in Trinity Chapel and produced a polished performance. Hanna Nott’s excellent leading on the violin meant that the trio were glued together throughout, and the sensitive accompaniment of the melody by all the players was impressive. In the Andantino there were balance issues, the violinist failing to match David Foster’s intense ‘cello sound, and some of her imitative melodies were lost. But this did not prevent Debussy’s vitality pervading the music.

The second movement begins with a sweet piano melody, which bears melodic similarities to his later piano work Golliwog’s Cakewalk, accompanied by pizzicato and birdcall trills which were passed sympathetically between the string players. The chamber musician’s nightmare of tuning octaves between string parts was generally overcome and both Nott and Foster made deft changes of articulation to enliven the music. We then reclined into Rupert Compston’s exploration of the distinctive harmonic world of the developing Debussy, but Foster’s sumptuous ‘cello melody was once more underwhelmed by the violin.

Marked 'Finale: Appassionato', this movement does exactly what it says on the tin and was the highlight of the concert. The violin and ‘cello play a young enamoured Parisian couple romantically frolicking down the banks of the Seine with Compston’s Cupid urging them on. Finally Nott came into her own, soaring into the eaves of the chapel with powerfully passionate melodies and was further intensified by the rapturous sounds which were coaxed from the Trinity Steinway.

Though this was one of Debussy’s first serious works, it was not published until 1986 - whereupon it received a barrage of unfair criticism about the immaturity of the writing. This is exactly the sort of performance that is needed to gain this work the recognition it deserves. All three of the musicians are playing in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time next Sunday at Trinity, and if Tuesday’s performance was anything to go by, it should be magnificent.

Andrew Browning