Claremont Trio and Paul Appleby: May 19, 2025

I heard a concert by the Claremont Trio and Paul Appleby on May 19, 2025, the last concert of the Music Mondays season. I went because I'm a fan of tenor Paul Appleby, who I've heard many times at the Met. And hey, the ticket was free as always with Music Mondays.

The trio opened the program with the piano trio in D minor by Gabriel Fauré. The pianist was extraordinary, elegant, expressive. The cellist was just fine. The violinist was less than that. Her playing skimmed over the surface of the music rather than digging into it.

The second movement started off with the violinist playing the tune and I don't know how this is possible but it sounded like the violin was clearing its throat. I was already thinking that I was going to leave at intermission and skip the Schubert. The cellist came in and sounded good. The pianist was full of ache and exquisite melancholy.

Then something fascinating happened. There was a longish sequence in this movement where the violin and cello play in unison. They sounded glorious, rich, haunting, perfectly melded. The women are twin sisters so I think there was something extra and unexplainable happening there. As soon as they split apart the violin was back to sounding wan and tentative.

The third movement had the pianist on fire. I want to hear her play a solo recital or play chamber music with other people, please.

Next up was the piece with Appleby, a world premiere by Jessica Meyer, commissioned by Music Mondays. The piece sounded too busy at first, all three instruments doing big things - - the strings sawing away, the right hand of the pianist going all over hell - - but then it calmed down when the tenor came in and I realized that opening bit was sort of an overture.

In some ways Meyer wrote skillfully for the voice but in other ways not at all. The text setting was good (the poems were by Giancarlo Latta), she often set the text in a way that illuminated the text, the phrases weren't too long, it often sounded like gratifying music to sing. But then at other times the vocal writing didn't work at all. Appleby sometimes had trouble with the approach to a high note in a tricky spot. This felt to me like more of a musical issue than a vocal issue. The second movement had a stepwise approach to a high note that did not sound comfortable. Appleby has a tasty middle voice so you'd think that she'd spend more time there and let him leap to the high notes for effect. There aren't many tenors who enjoy hanging out in the upper voice.

Here's Appleby singing Berlioz at Glyndebourne. This dude knew how to write for a tenor:

The third movement had quite a few moments when I accurately predicted where the vocal line was going. You might say this says the music is well made, that it has a strong sense of logic to it. I'm afraid it means that it's predictable. Maybe the real issue is my heavy sigh impulse to feel that I CAN predict where the melody was going. Someone could write a master's thesis on this.

The ending to the piece was a little ambiguous for my taste, especially for the last movement. I did not stay for the Schubert. I'm fine with a mediocre performance of Fauré and a world premiere but it would be painful to hear a mediocre performance of Schubert.