Trio in G, No. 25 - Haydn
Trio in G, Op. 8 - Chopin
Trio in B flat, Op. 97 (Archduke) - Beethoven
A good crowd gathered in the President's Hall of the Law Society's Palladian mansion in Blackhall Place to hear music that came from more or less the same period as the building. The architecture speaks of classical calm, but the music chosen was full of romantic turmoil. Even Haydn was in singularly unbuttoned mood in the Gypsy Rondo of his Trio in G which was played with fiery enthusiasm by the Takacs Trio. A different kind of authenticity emerged in Chopin's Trio, Op.8 which was an outburst of Slav melancholy, particularly marked in the passionate expressiveness of the Adagio.
The melodic line seemed to have been written to support a narrative of tearful intensity. The performances of these works offered many incidental beauties but for mastery of the medium of the piano trio - piano, cello and violin - neither the works nor the performances could hold a candle to Beethoven's Archduke Trio.
Here the totality of the conception and the tension of the performance joined in a way that gripped the imagination.