Thyrsus Trio, Schubert Trio No. 1 in B-flat major D.898
The thyrsus, a quick check with Wikipedia suggests, is a kind of staff used in rituals “ typically associated with the Greek god Dionysus (and his subsequent Roman equivalent Bacchus) as a symbol of prosperity, fertility, and hedonism.”. It has to be said that St Pancras, the church near Euston Station, didn’t immediately offer itself as a symbol of hedonism – it’s built in an 18th century-looking classical style that feels a bit forbidding, particularly on a cold cloudy day threatening to rain at any minute. But actually lunchtime concerts and recitals in the middle of the city are one of the hidden glories of London and on most weekdays there’s 5 or 6 to choose from. Sometimes I let myself be adventurous but for today there was no choice because it was one of the Schubert Piano Trios on offer – both are glorious works, and it was only being performed just down the road from the hotel I was staying in.
The lunchtime concert audiences are a mixed crew – down more in the City area there are a fair number of pretty affluent looking City-workers; here in St Pancras we were a more motley crew, mainly elderly , with an admixture of Chinese students and other young people who might have been friends of the players – maybe 40-45 people in all.
The Thyrsus Trio don’t have much of an online presence but I saw something that suggested they had an association with the Guildhall School. I know the Schubert work quite well but don’t have particular recordings implanted in my memory to compare this Trio with against others. As far as I could tell they were:
- Generous in their playing – many if not all the available repeats were taken
- Although the church had the usual rumbly ecclesiastical acoustics, to the extent I could tell, offering a seemingly well balanced performance, which must be tricky when you have a piano and strings to balance. Certainly I could always hear the different lines of the instruments
- Tempi seemed well-judged, particularly in the slow movement. Schubert’s special moments of thematic transformation/modulation always seemed to be handled well
And I came away with a sense of wonder at the fertility of Schubert’s invention and his sense of hedonism in the face of imminent death (the work was finished in the last year of his life). I hope other people in the audience felt wonder too – there was a very desultory amount of applause from the audience which stopped as soon as the musicians were out of sight. In the very unlikely circumstance that any of the Trio read this, I do hope they will accept my apologies for the poor response of my fellow audience members and my reassurance that I at least thought they had given a very enjoyable performance!!
John's musical journey 