An Inspiring Sunday Afternoon in OC with Mutter-Ferrández-Bronfman Piano Trio
/By Truman C. Wang
5/9/2025
The power of chamber music lies not merely in the virtuosity of its players, but in their chemistry—the invisible threads of musical understanding that bind them together. When violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, cellist Pablo Ferrández, and pianist Yefim Bronfman took the stage at the Segerstrom Concert Hall on Sunday, May 4 (presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County), these threads were immediately apparent, resulting in performance of drama and cohesion from their instruments.
Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio opened the program with noble assurance. Bronfman played with a genial, singing tone in the opening theme. Mutter, known for her silvery tone and intense phrasing, provided the perfect foil to Ferrández's warm cello sonority. The scherzo was playful and marked with crisp rhythmic articulation. In the andante cantabile, time seemed to stand still as the trio navigated Beethoven's sublime theme and variations with remarkable restraint. (Brian Lauritzen, in his cogent pre-concert lecture, called this movement the emotional core of the work.)
After intermission, we heard the rarely-performed Tchaikovsky Piano Trio, written "in memory of a great artist" (pianist Nikolai Rubinstein). Here, the collective emotional range of the performers was on full display. The opening elegiac theme, introduced with heartbreaking eloquence by Ferrández, set the tone for a reading that honored both the work's profound grief and its moments of catharsis.
Bronfman's handling of the notoriously demanding piano part was extraordinary—powerful yet never overwhelming his colleagues. The expansive variations of the second movement, with dramatic pauses, garnered premature applause from the audience (and dismayed looks on the players’ faces).
The encore, theme from John Williams’ “Schindler’s List”, continued the theme of grief in a somber but radiant reading from the Trio.
photo: classical voice
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.