Pas de Trois
Venticordi (oboe, violin, piano, viola)
Navona Records nv6680 (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6680)
Since 2009, oboist Kathleen McNerney and violinist Dean Stein, artistic directors of Portland, Maine-based VentiCordi Chamber Music, have discovered and performed neglected works involving their instruments. Joining them on this, VentiCordi’s debut CD, are pianist Pamela Mia Paul and violist Susan Dubois.
Pas de Trois for oboe, violin and piano by Pulitzer Prize-winning American Ned Rorem (1923-2022) is a kaleidoscope of changing moods and vividly contrasted instrumental colours. Its six movements encompass a melancholy serenade; an aggressive, syncopated dance; a fanciful ambulation; a sentimental waltz; a wild scramble; echoes of Satie’s Gymnopedies and a bubbling finale, mildly spiced with piquant discords. It’s all very entertaining.
In 1938, the Jewish Hans Gál (1890-1987) left his now Nazi-occupied native Austria, settling in Edinburgh. There, in 1941, he composed his Trio for Oboe, Violin and Viola, Op.94, nostalgic music recalling happier times. The gentle, folk-flavoured Pastorale is followed by Intermezzo grazioso, a light-hearted, occasionally wrong-footed folk dance. Intermezzo agitato is hardly “agitated,” merely suggesting clouds gathering amid the sunshine. Introduzione. Meditation on a Scottish Tune begins pensively before a set of variations on a traditional melody ends Gál’s grateful tribute to his newly-adopted land.
Air, Variations & Finale for oboe, violin and piano by Birmingham-born Dorothy Howell (1898-1982) is very much in the British folk-inspired idiom. With the oboe in the forefront, the music is successively reflective, cheerful, sprightly, plaintive, rollicking, languid, ponderous, disquieted, jaunty, rhapsodic and triumphant. It’s really quite a trip!
