Minerva Piano Trio: Dance!
SOMM Recordings

On their smartly curated debut release Dance!, Minerva Piano Trio members Annie Yim (piano), Michal Cwizewicz (violin), and Richard Birchall (cello) couple pieces by Stravinsky and Ravel with new works by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Caroline Shaw, and Birchall himself. The release comes by its title honestly: Pulcinella Suite and Daphnis et Chloé originated as ballet music, Shaw's Gustave Le Gray is rooted in a Chopin mazurka, and Frances-Hoad's My Fleeting Angel and Birchall's Contours include waltz episodes. Blending the familiar and the novel works strongly in the trio's favour.

The UK trio's sound has grown in refinement and maturity since its 2013 inception, ample evidence of both qualities present on the recording. Their talents extend beyond performance, however: not only a cellist and composer, Birchall's credited with the arrangement of the eight-part Pulcinella Suite; Yim also arranged a piece, in her case Shaw's Gustave Le Gray. Elsewhere, David Knott's credited with the arrangement of three scenes from Daphnis et Chloé. All three, incidentally, are first recordings, as is Birchall's Contours.

You can't go wrong in opening a recording with Stravinsky's richly melodic work. It shouldn't be forgotten, however, that the Russian composer based Pulcinella on eighteenth-century music by Italian composers such as Pergolesi, Gallo, Wassenaer, and Monza, their enticing source material key to the work's appeal. Though the original ballet comprises twenty-one parts (which Stravinsky reduced to eight for his own orchestral suite), Birchall's 2021 arrangement thoughtfully sequences his own selection of Pulcinella numbers into a satisfying arc. The material amplifies the album theme splendidly when the short movements focus on different dance forms. The regal “Overture” seduces immediately with singing melodies, after which the trio progresses through movements that are haunting (“Serenata”), effervescent (“Allegro assai”), lyrical (“Andante”), rousing (“Presto”), and graceful (“Gavotta con due variazioni”) before exiting via the majestic “Minuetto e Finale.” Stravinsky's signature voice is naturally present throughout despite the work being grounded in material by other composers.

As intimated by its title, Birchall's Contours (2014) explores notions of shape and line in four concise and contrasting parts. A sinuous, rather cryptic “Moderate” initiates the work with chromatic lines criss-crossing and intertwining like a Möbius strip. Without betraying the enigmatic character of the opening part, “Fast” delivers an accelerated scherzo-like take that's arrested by the triple-time slow-motion of “Nocturne - Adagio” until it's likewise offset by the ballroom-like sway of the “Fast Waltz” conclusion.

Originally composed for solo piano, Shaw's Gustave Le Gray was written shortly after the American composer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for eight voices (2009-11). Similar to the Stravinsky work, Shaw's reworks another composer's, the starting point here Chopin's Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17 No. 4. The embroidering of Shaw's material with his is in keeping with the figure after whom the piece is titled, Le Gray being a nineteenth-century French artist remembered for a photographic technique that combined negatives to generate a single layered print. Shaw's melodic sensibility emerges in the pulsating pattern that introduces the piece, though the Polish composer's does too as echoes of the mazurka gradually seep in. Though ten minutes only, Gustave Le Gray nevertheless makes a powerful impression on the strength of its haunting melodic content and well-calibrated mood-building.

For My Fleeting Angel (2005), Frances-Hoad drew for inspiration from a Sylvia Plath short story, “The Wishing Box,” about a husband and wife whose distinct dream lives—Harold's vivid and colourful, Agnes's foreboding—divide the couple (she ultimately succumbs to depression and fatally overdoses). Programmatic details from the story find their way into the musical fabric, but the listener can of course disregard that aspect and still come away wholly satisfied by the music. Certainly a dream-like quality pervades the “Larghetto”; agitated by comparison is the central “Allegro spiritoso e scherzando.” In keeping with the story-line, the fractured walt gestures of the closing “Allegretto eleganza” might be taken for signs of increasing confusion on Agnes's part.

Ravel's fifty-minute Daphnis et Chloé is reduced to three scenes lasting fifteen minutes in this 2017 trio version. Again, one can bear the plot in mind (which basically has to do with the developing love of a goatherd for a shepherdess), but Ravel's writing, needless to say, charms perfectly well on its own. Perhaps it's best to follow Yim, who suggests the three movements might be seen as reflecting a romantic trajectory encompassing “innocence, awakening, touch, and passion.” After an evocatively crepuscular and tremulous “Nocturne,” the composer's persona asserts itself boldly in the sensuous “Pantomime” and its entrancing violin melody. Delivered at a furious clip, “Danse Guerriere” caps the release on an ultra-high energy note. Each member performs the work impeccably, and the trio plays all of the album material with conviction and sensitivity, their deep grasp of each piece's character never in doubt. Dance! is a strong and accomplished statement and impresses all the more for being Minerva Piano Trio's debut recording.

December 2022