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"Trio's concerted effort for charity"
Anima Mundi is the latest in the family of local chamber music groups and has the normal piano trio format but its members are very familiar faces. Pianist Kenji Fujimura is well remembered from his days at the Australian National Academy of Music; two years ago in St. Michael's Uniting Church he collaborated with Elizabeth Sellars in a lengthy cycle of Mozart violin sonatas.
Violinist Rebecca Chan is also an ANAM graduate and regularly appears in the ranks of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Australia Pro Arte. Miranda Brockman, part of a productive musical family, is a regular face in the MSO's cello desks.
They have come together to present three concerts this year to raise money for charities: health and sanitation in Papua New Guinea; Ballan District Health and Care, a reading program at Bacchus Marsh run by the Smith Family and Royal Children's Hospital; and the Activate leadership programs for Melbourne's disadvantaged youth.
As expected, the players moved into a solid, professional working relationship right from the opening to the Brahms Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Fujimura keeping a cool head in dealing with the voluminous riches of the keyboard line. Even so, this turned out to be a generous realisation, Chan and Brockman giving full measure to the sumptuous string duets that surge out with heartfelt magniloquence in three of the four movements.
One of the trio's aims is to resurrect the music of a forgotten generation of pre-Walton British composers: Stanford, Hurlstone and Ireland feature in later programs but on Sunday the group played Frank Bridge's Phantasie
Trio No.1, a one-movement work packed with arresting motives and a strong lyrical flow that made an exemplary pendant for the Brahms work. Written in a mobile circular form, the work shows a keen awareness of its instrumental possibilities, and its harmonic language has a directness and fluency that make you wonder about its neglect.
While the piano has its fair share of labour in the Bridge work, in the Saint-Saens Trio No.2 Fujimura was put to full stretch, particularly in the voluble outer Allegro movements, while the strings enjoyed the easy lilt of the even-numbered inner movements, dances with more than a hint of the cabaret about them but giving Chan's left hand a good deal of exercise.
Not the most demanding music in the repertoire, this happy rarity, stacked with bonhomie despite its minor key, brought the Soul of the World trio's first Melbourne outing to an effervescent conclusion.
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