Bruce Hodges attends the performance of Messiaen, Schumann and Debussy at Philadelphia’s Perelman Theater on 31 January 2025
To the traditional piano trio, add a clarinet, and voilà – Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is born. It would be hard to ask for a better crew for this masterpiece than the foursome assembled here by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Gloria Chien, Soovin Kim and Paul Watkins have aligned as the CKW Trio (the initials of their surnames), and were joined here by Ricardo Morales, principal clarinettist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The work’s eight movements not only showed off the group – especially in the more violent sequences – but the individual instruments as well. In the unison passages, there were times when Kim and Watkins’s tonal beauty joined as if they had plotted to fashion a slightly alien, hybrid instrument.
In the fifth movement, Chien and Watkins offered patient, relentless control, coupled with sumptuous tone flooding out from the cellist’s instrument, made in Venice c.1730 by Domenico Montagnana and Matteo Gofriller. And in the finale, Chien again summoned the most gossamer of keyboard touches, alighting next to Kim, whose violin was constructed by the great Sam Zygmuntowicz. Needless to say, Morales made a dream partner.
Earlier, the CKW Trio dispatched Schumann’s First Piano Trio with warmth and abandon. In the opening movement, a striking sul ponticello sequence for the two string instruments combined with the sparkling piano for an effect evoking a music box.
And sometimes it’s good to have the dessert first. Morales and Chien began the evening with Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie, both artists extracting every last drop of the composer’s springlike paintbox of colours.
Bruce Hodges
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