Dazzling French, odd Germans

Ravel astounds me more every time I hear his music.

Monday night, for instance, the Prometheus Trio played Ravel’s Piano Trio, vintage 1914. In all four movements, the concept couldn’t be simpler. Step 1: Lay out two or three distinct ideas. They needn’t be actual melodies; a gesture will do, or even a scale of distinct character. Step 2: Toss like a salad until it seems dressed just enough.

The art lies in the tossing and the dressing. Ravel’s incomparable gifts for fantastical sonorities and gestures come into play, along with his sense of the emotional resonance of the fleeting moment. The trio opens with the airiest outline of a tune. Violinist Timothy Klabunde and cellist Scott Tisdel brushed the strings as lightly as a father brushing his baby’s cheek with a finger. The music quivered on the edge of… of something. That something turned out to be a vertiginous ride on an ecstasy of multi-octave, overlapping, exotic scales in the strings and in Stephanie Jacob’s piano.

Staccato barbs of sound, impersonal as the pops and whirrs of a 1960 sci-fi computer, opened the second movement. They gave way it a dreamy, legato swoon, in as unlikely a pairing of themes as you’ll hear. Together, they built to a whirling Bacchanale. A low, modal groan of an ancient folk song, the essence of the third movement, lends weight and dark relief to otherwise brilliant music. In the finale, Ravel contrasts and combines suave French cafe music with pentatonic chinoiserie. Ravel subjects all of these elements to dazzling mutations of endless variety, but all of them have one thing in common: utterly beguiling sonic beauty.

This music is very hard to play, and it must be played very well to make its points. My ease in conveying those points here speaks to Klabunde, Tisdel and Jacob’s command of the notes and sympathy with Ravel’s aesthetic.

Lili Boulanger, who died in 1918 at the age of 24, lived longer, she might have been the next step in French music after Debussy and Ravel.  It sounded that way Monday, as the Prometheans played Boulanger’s Of a Sad Evening and Of a Spring Morning. You can hear those extended chords, the major ninths and augmented 11ths and so on, so beloved by Ravel and Debussy; but Boulanger goes a little further. For example: She undercuts the unfurling of her gorgeous melodies with troubled excursions into bitonality or bimodality in the accompaniment. In Sad Evening, especially, a certain dislocation of elements gives the music a dreamy, surrealistic cast. But what seems to be a mood piece takes an unlikely dramatic turn and drives to a surprisingly powerful climax. The players made a very strong case for this intriguing musical figure.

French music made the biggest impression Monday, but German music filled the first half: Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Opus 88, and Beethoven’s Trio No. 8, Opus 121a (“Kakadu” variations).

Both are odd ducks. The Beethoven has just two movements. The first turns out to be a mock-serious introduction, in which an ardent probing toward a melody turns out to be the principal theme, which turns out to be a foreshadowing of the cheery operetta tune that is the subject of lively variations in the second movement. This is
Beethoven’s idea of fun, and it is fun.

Same goes for Schumann. The first movement is galloping hunt music, but weirdly slowed down; the hunt could be under water. A cartoonish bumpkin stroll; a lovely, lyrical sentimental tune; and some march-tempo madness of one crazy episode after another follow. I particularly liked the gentle, celesta-tone ringing Jacob drew from the piano in the third movement.

The Prometheans threw in another little Beethoven thing, an unnamed work composed for a piano student (and apparently two friends), as an encore. It’s charming, and you’re not likely to hear it anywhere but at the repeat performance of this program. That would be at 7:30 tonight (Tuesday, April 26), at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. The place was packed Monday, so call ahead for tickets; 414 276-5760.