It was indeed an epic musical journey that The Odysseus Piano Trio took us on at the latest Music Nairn concert in the Community and Arts Centre.  Brahms' B-major Trio op 8 which opened the concert is a remarkable masterpiece, all the more remarkable when we recall that it was the composer's first attempt at the genre, composed in 1854 when he was just 21.  It is a work, which he clearly valued, returning to it in his old age in 1889 to revise and improve it.  It is a work on an epic scale with truly symphonic pretensions, luxuriating in a 'wall of sound' from the three instruments involved.  More than once you find yourself looking at the players, as if to check that there are still only three of them!  Domonkos Csabay delighted in the magnificent Music Nairn Steinway piano, realising Brahms' bravura keyboard writing with exceptional skill and musicality.  In this he was ably matched by cellist Rosie Biss and violinist Sara Trickey, whose wonderfully powerful string tones made for a memorable account.  The Mendelssohnian Scherzo and exquisitely lyrical Adagio revealed the ensemble's more delicate and expressive side, while the haunted Finale reached a remarkable pitch of intensity.  Most impressive of all to my mind was the wonderful sense of ensemble, which never faltered throughout this long and demanding programme.

The second half opened with Three Whistler Miniatures by contemporary composer Helen Grime.  Inspired by three paintings by the American painter James McNeill Whistler, which Music Nairn had enterprisingly reproduced in the printed programme, these three impressionistic movements used the art as a springboard to explore the timbres and textures of the three instruments.  The enigmatic titles of the art works, The Little Note in Yellow and Gold, Lapis Lazuli and The Violet Note seem themselves to bear only a tangential relationship to the mildly erotic paintings – a considerable contrast to the painter's most famous work, the sombre portrait of his mother!  Grimes expertly creates diaphanous and shimmering textures, delighting in overlaying the timbres of the three instruments, while in the more contrapuntal central movement another side of this talented composer emerges.  One audience member provided a useful programme note by commenting that it was 'as if Debussy had carried on composing into our own times'. 

The concert concluded with Dvorak's Dumky Trio op 90, a work completed in 1891 on the eve of the composer's trip to America.  The title comes from a type of Ukrainian folk dance and indeed the Trio takes the form of a sequence of dance episodes strung loosely into a four-movement form.  Of all Dvorak's chamber works, this has one of the least convincing structures, perhaps falling between the two stools of a standard four-movement Trio and a full-on episodic structure such as his earlier Cypresses for string quartet.  Perhaps, if the composer had been on hand to oversee the publication in person, he might have tightened up the overall structure.  That said, the Odysseus players delighted in Dvorak's felicitous melodies and energetic dance textures, bringing this work excitingly to life.  If this music perhaps lacks the almost unbearable yearning with which the composer infused the Czech flavoured melodies he composed in America and after his return, it is still engaging and beautifully crafted, and the Trio found their way to the heart of this repertoire too.