Merz Trio: INK
Bright Shiny Things
The strikingly imaginative debut album by Merz Trio embroiders Ravel's iconic Piano Trio with spoken texts and related musical pieces by Debussy, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Mélanie Bonis, and others. The recording vividly evokes a particular time in French cultural history and invites the listener to vicariously partake of it; further to that, words by Jean Cocteau, Alain-Fournier, and Guillaume Apollinaire can't help but imbue the project with period character. All credit, then, to pianist Lee Dionne, violinist Brigid Coleridge, and cellist Julia Yang for conceiving such a stimulating project when they could just as easily have presented two or three musical works and left it at that. With thoughtfully selected texts read by the trio members, INK becomes a considerably more engaging affair as a result.
It's not the first time the Boston-based group has enlivened its projects. Among those with whom Merz Trio has collaborated are a dancer, puppeteer, and mime. And neither is it the only time the trio has married text and music, with another piece featuring excerpts from Macbeth and a forthcoming one incorporating trios by Tchaikovsky and Jeffrey Mumford. Of course, INK isn't only a history lesson, though it is that. In the trio's own words, the album concerns “how we put our ear to a distant time and what we might hear there, as well as how we bring these voices into the present, how their conversation creates meaning and space for us to reflect and to hear differently in our own time.”
Completed in September 1914, Ravel's Piano Trio forms the arresting centre around which the other elements constellate. Though it was written quickly, the speed of its creation facilitated by the outbreak of WWI and before the composer's enlisting as a nurse's aide in the army, the work shows no signs of haste and exemplifies the refinement characteristic of Ravel. The beauty of the opening “Modéré” recalls the quiet majesty of Ma mère l'Oye, which preceded the Piano Trio by four years. Contrasting with “Modéré” is the lively second movement “Pantoum: Assezvif,” the elegiac third “Passacaille: Très large,” and the expansive “Final: Animé."
Accompanying the Ravel trio are other French salon pieces that similarly locate the listener in Paris at the time of the war's inception. After a brief spoken word account of French poet's Charles Péguy's last day in Paris, the city's romantic aura is conjured by a lovely Merz Trio arrangement of Vincent Scotto's 1913 waltz “Sous les ponts de Paris” the group modeled after Josephine Baker's. Other settings that register strongly include Lili Boulanger's “D'un vieux jardin” and Bonis's “Matin,” settings that sparkle so elegantly they could be mistaken for ones by Ravel, and Nadia Boulanger's haunting “Heures ternes.”
As the album enters its closing moments, the anxiety of the era is conveyed in an excerpt from Appolinaire's “La Petite Auto” (“We said goodbye to an entire epoch, furious giants were rising over Europe…”), after which Debussy's “Le plus que lente” caps the release with a lovely five-minute waltz confection. As the Ravel work's movements are the longest on the album, they afford the best appreciation of Merz Trio's musicianship and the exceptional balance the players achieve when performing together. It's tempting to single out individual members for the way each distinguishes particular passages, but it's ultimately the trio's playing as a unit that makes the greater impact.September 2021