Two of the finest wind players on the recital circuit teamed up Sunday evening to open the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library’s Chamber Concert Series.
Flutist Demarre McGill is well known and loved here as the San Diego Symphony’s former principal flutist, a member of the Myriad Trio, and co-founder of Art of Elan. Clarinetist Anthony McGill (yes, they are brothers) has appeared numerous times for Mainly Mozart and the La Jolla Music Society.
They were joined by the Belfast-born and London-based pianist, Michael McHale, whose keyboard artistry instantly impressed.
The repertory for flute, clarinet and piano trios is not very extensive, most having been written in the last 50 years. The McGill/McHale Trio presented three works from their 2017 CD, “Portraits.”
The most engaging of these was Guillaume Connesson’s “Techno-Parade.” Although inspired by techno music, there was little actual repetition of which the genre might suggest. What “Techno-Parade” did have over the course of its 4-1/2 minutes was relentless momentum. It was an infernal machine with devilishly shifting meters and jagged melodies which all three musicians performed with an irresistible zest.
Anthony McGill commissioned Chris Rogerson to arrange the first movement of his piano trio, “River Songs,” for the McGill/McHale Trio. “A Fish Will Rise” invoked the harmonies of Copland’s populist middle period. Its intertwined motives suggested trout swimming in fast streams and floating in more placid waters. Likable enough on the surface and arranged well for the instruments, this listener never swallowed the bait.
Valerie Coleman’s “Portraits of Langston” was extremely well written for flute and clarinet, not surprising as she is a flutist and a founding member of the Imani Winds. Its six movements are tone poems on poetry and prose by Langston Hughes that was read aloud on the “Portraits” CD, but omitted on Sunday’s concert. Coleman’s music often captured the elegance and grace of Hughes, but lacked the musical equivalent of his grit. Without program notes, I’d never guess that “Le Grand Duc Mambo” depicted a brawl in a nightclub nor the fifth movement a “Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret.”
The program was played without intermission, with McHale taking two solos in the middle of the concert to give the McGills a breather. Augusta Holmès “Évocation d’amour” was originally a song in 7/8 time, an unusual meter for 1892. McHale arranged it in a Lisztian fashion, always bringing the melody forward amidst right and left hand filigrees.
The other compositional surprise of the evening was Missy Mazzoli’s “Heartbreaker,” written as a competition piece for the American Pianists Association. Its challenges are less virtuosic and more interpretive. “Heartbreaker” used tonal harmonies in asymmetrical phrases, alternatingly pushing forward and holding back in a language that, unlike Rogerson and Coleman, owed little to previous models or styles. McHale’s performance here was captivating.
The concert was anchored by Poulenc’s Sonata for Flute and Piano and his Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. The Flute Sonata showcased Demarre McGill’s lustrous sonority, including an enviable fullness of tone in his upper register. McHale’s cantabile playing was deliciously creamy.
In the Clarinet Sonata, Anthony McGill displayed eerily beautiful arpeggios just on the verge of audibility. He played with admirable consistency of tone, here as well as throughout the evening.
For an encore, the Trio played McHale’s delightful arrangement of the old Irish tune, “The Lark in the Clear Air,” which was beautifully sounded by all three performers.
Editor’s note: Hertzog served as artistic director of the Chamber Music Series at the Athenaeum from 2018 to 2022.
Hertzog is a freelance writer.