Gryphon Trio with James Campbell at SubCulture
The two pieces of music selected for the Gryphon Trio's performance Thursday night were conceived under circumstances too complimentary to have been chosen accidentally. While quite different musically, both Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor and Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time were composed in the shadow of war, and, as such, stand as testaments to the enduring power of beauty in a chaotic world. In the subterranean, bunker-like space at SubCulture, these technically demanding works triumphantly soared through the apropos darkness.
Although the origin story of Ravel's trio is compelling (he finished the work at breakneck speed in August 1914, composing, as he wrote to Maurice Delage, "with the sureness and lucidity of a madman" so he could volunteer for the army), it’s important to remember, as Ravel himself said, that "sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art." The Gryphon Trio—violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys, and pianist James Parker—seemed attuned to this, and played with corresponding gusto from the piece's first movement, inspired by Basque dance rhythms, to its more orchestral finale.
While World War I did not serve as a point of inspiration for Ravel's work, Messiaen's quartet was truly written in the eye of the maelstrom—in a German prisoner of war camp, with Messiaen and three fellow captives playing in the premiere performance at the camp while surrounded by their captors. Divided into eight movements, the quartet is a spiritual and emotional quest. Eschewing traditional rhythms, it operates under its own logic and creates its own universe of sound, including orchestrations meant to evoke the songs of birds and the wails of humans.
Clarinetist James Campbell, an occasional collaborator with the Trio, was a welcome addition here. In the third movement, a notoriously difficult clarinet solo named "Abyss of the Birds," Campbell stole the show, and to say that he made it look easy would be disingenuous. Indeed, even in his unquestionably capable hands, the solo still looked—and sounded—extremely challenging; it was riveting nonetheless.
Borys and Patipatanakoon each had their respective times to shine during two movements of praise: "Praise to the Immortality of Jesus," and "Praise to the Eternity of Jesus," each complimented by Parker's piano playing. While the members of the trio work expertly as an ensemble, it was nice to see them stand out in these duo moments, in which they seemed to grapple individually with the larger themes of this work.
And what a work it is: gorgeously haunting, at once holy and deeply human, hard to play, and often hard to digest. But in the Gryphon Trio's care, it was certainly a journey worth taking.