The Merz Trio are transformers – no, not the toys that change from one configuration to another to fight crime and entertain generations of toddlers. The Merz Trio also performs magical transformations, though, and they may just be musical geniuses who can transform everything from orchestral works to ancient chants into compositions fit for a very talented piano trio. My kind of transformers!

On Sunday, March 12th, the Merz Trio performed what can only be called a “transformative concert.”  What their wonderfully clever pianist and chief transformer, Lee Dionne, accomplished was a transformation of a diverse variety of musical genres into the remarkably unified voices of only three instruments: piano (Lee Dionne), violin (Brigid Coleridge), and cello (Julia Yang).  Caught up in the magic, I – and I suspect the rest of the audience,  forgot about the origins of these musical selections, which ranged from Hildegarde von Bingen to Thelonius Monk,  and simply reveled in the transformations.

Particularly noteworthy were the harmonies:  the perfect blend of the three musicians and their ability to produce a single, fresh and often surprising, unitary sound was,  I thought,  exceptional.  And while on the subject of sounds, it is unusual to hear a piano trio in which the piano does not dominate the strings and where, except for solos, the strings get lost in the piano.  The Merz managed this subtlety with amazing grace and well-honed skill.  In a sense, the trio performs music that is experiential.  There was a deliberation:  how the sequences worked, one playing off against another, and the glimmers of the familiar juxtaposed with the new and original sparks.  Pure genius!

The selections they performed created a theme of night and darkness and it was poetic in descriptions of dreams, terrors and the unknowable.  I particularly enjoyed their last selection, a transcription of La Valse, a masterwork by Ravel, originally written as a symphonic poem.  It was presented as the memory of a waltz, but it captured so many bits and lines which embodied the essence of the full original work that ephemera became the composition. 

The Four Songs of Alma Mahler and Alban Berg, with which the Merz began the second half of the program, presented a transformation as well.  By arranging and sequencing these songs as the trio did, there appeared a transformation from darkness to revelation.  The series of compositions from the first half of the concert seemed to lead naturally into the Four Songs.  This narrative style the Merz presents gave their concert a thematic unity.

The Merz Trio was formed, incredibly, only six years ago.  Given their extraordinary expertise and finely-tuned musical sensibilities, I expect they will soon be widely known as a premiere trio.

– E Doyle