A golden night for glowing Gryphons

March 5, 2008
JOHN TERAUDS
CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC

The Gryphon Trio celebrated two milestones last night by doing what they do best: bringing a thoughtful program to life with careful artistry.

Violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, her cellist husband Roman Borys and pianist Jamie Parker – who all now teach at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music – first started performing together as the Gryphon Trio 15 years ago. For 10 of those years, they have presented their local recitals through the Music Toronto concert series, based at the Jane Mallett Theatre.

There were anniversary pastries on offer at the postconcert party at the St. Lawrence Centre, but the real treats were the ones the Gryphons had performed onstage (and recorded for future broadcast on CBC Radio).

The evening's closer was one of the core masterpieces that every piano trio must play at some point in its history: Ludwig van Beethoven's 1811 "Archduke" Trio.

It felt as if the Gryphons had lit their own birthday candles with this 40-minute wonder. They played it like everything else on the substantial program, giving each piece a deep, golden glow rather than a brash concert sheen.

Even the virtuosic flash written into many of last night's scores was carefully buffed down to highlight carefully shaped phrases and an elegant appreciation of musical architecture underneath them.

Robert Schumann's Piano Trio No. 2, which dates from 1842, received the same deluxe treatment as the program's opener. The playing was so nicely balanced that it was easy to overlook how the last two movements do not present a coherent musical argument.

One can't make the same complaint about the Toronto premieres of Ukranian composer Yevhen Stankovych's Piano Trio No. 3 and Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich's lovely Scales of Joy and Sorrow, which the trio premiered last summer in Ottawa Articulated chords interwoven with scales passed between the three instruments made for simple, tonal beauty that had all the expressiveness and rapidly shifting moods of a film soundtrack.

The Gryphon Trio regularly exposes high-school students to the joys of classical music. Last night, as they do once a year, they played a new, remarkably sophisticated composition by Willa Wu, who graduated from the Claude Watson School of the Arts (at Earl Haig Collegiate) last summer.

This embarrassment of riches is all in a night's work for the Gryphons. It's no wonder their musical abilities are finding a wider circle of fans around the world.