NZTrio: electrifying momentum
NZTrio performing their “Hypnotique” programme in Christchurch for Christopher’s Classics. (From left) Amalia Hall (violin), Matthias Balzat (cello), Somi Kim (piano).
Photo credit: NZTrio
NZTrio showed their affinity for the energetic music of Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin earlier this year and returned to this Uzbekistan-born composer to open their final tour of 2025. Her Calliope Dreaming for piano trio was written as a tribute to Joseph Haydn, as part of a 2009 festival marking 200 years since his death, and the composer acknowledges the stimulus of Haydn’s “Mourning” Symphony No. 44 and her title’s reference to both the calliope, a keyboard instrument made up of steam whistles, and Calliope the Greek muse of epic poetry.
This range of inspiration has produced a forthright and full-bodied work with rhythmic and jazzy elements, and the Trio’s exuberant performance pulled all the threads together with a gripping sense of forward momentum.
In fact, momentum was a feature of most of the programme. The NZTrio, in its new line-up of Amalia Hall, Somi Kim and Matthias Balzat, seemed in this concert to have fully gelled into a unified, high-octane ensemble playing with marvellous freedom and unanimous rapport.
Their “Hypnotique” programme continued with Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Trio in D minor Opus 120, the French composer’s only piano trio and his penultimate composition, written near the end of his life when he was profoundly deaf. It’s a gorgeous and romantic work, full of continuous and flowing melodies, and the three musicians responded with vivid and rich timbres. Balzat, who seemed occasionally a little restrained in their last concert, here produced a big, glowing and resonant tone, his rapport with Hall impeccable and both string players responding to Kim’s singing pianism.
NZTrio has introduced its audience to many exciting contemporary composers over the years but American composer Pascal Le Boeuf’s Obliquely Wrecked may indeed be, as Kim suggested in her introduction, “the coolest piece we’ve ever done”. The multi-award-winning Le Boeuf is a jazz pianist, electronic artist and composer who works at the cutting edge of contemporary music, and in creating this piece set out to compose “a continuous high-energy work” full of fast tempi and syncopated rhythms.
Award-winning composer, pianist and producer Pascal Le Boeuf
“…his Obliquely Wrecked is described by the NZTrio as ‘the coolest piece we’ve ever done!’”
He would probably find NZTrio the ideal ensemble to realise his “high-energy” ambitions. Obliquely Wrecked began with Hall playing inside the high register of the piano, Balzat stopping all the cello’s strings for some energetic “silent” bowing before sliding glissandi, Kim with soft beater inside the piano while the strings bowed repetitive ascending figures in a kind of moto perpetuo, then joined by Kim travelling up and down the keyboard at speed. OK, it's hard to describe – you had to be there!
The excitement seemed never-ending, with cross rhythms, piano clusters, lots of repetition – and then, suddenly, it was all a little held back, a high romantic cello tune soaring forth before more rapid scrubbing with bows, Kim back inside the piano, a fierce, rough section in rhythmic unison and a dramatic forearm cluster on the piano bringing the exhilarating work to a close. Wow!
Two decades ago, Scottish-New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell wrote two speedy works on commission, a trumpet concerto for the NZSO called Alas, how swift! and Moto Perpetuo for NZTrio. The concerto’s title quoted from a sundial inscription in a park in Edinburgh near the composer’s home, on one side “I number none but sunny hours” and on the other “So passes life. Alas, how swift!”
Cresswell died in 2022. The current NZTrio line-up were not part of that 2006 commission but have brought Moto Perpetuo back to life for their 2025 tour programme, acknowledging Cresswell’s extraordinary musical legacy. The “hectic and chaotic” work fits these virtuosic musicians like a glove, their impeccable ensemble work delivering the electrifying momentum the work demands. Their brilliant performance matched Cresswell’s skilful writing and they held the audience transfixed right through to the intense ending.
“Lyell Cresswell’s Moto Perpetuo for piano trio
…fits these virtuosic musicians like a glove.”
Photo credit: Gareth Watkins
NZTrio has throughout its musical life gained a reputation for adventurous programming and it’s good to see the new line-up taking their audience with them while still pushing repertoire boundaries. The last work of their concert was a stroke of programming genius – after four varied works featuring continuous musical flow of all kinds, they finished with Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night), a substantial work of late Romanticism full of seemingly infinite melody.
NZTrio in Auckland
Photo credit: NZTrio
This piano trio version of Schoenberg’s original string sextet of 1899 was arranged in 1932, with Schoenberg’s approval, by Eduard Steuermann, an Austrian-born Jewish American pianist and composer who had studied composition with the older composer and performed his music. Verklaerte Nacht was inspired by a love poem by Richard Dehmel and is full of passionate eroticism.
Replacing six string instruments with piano trio might have risked some loss of the work’s homogeneous beauty, but Kim’s pianism is rippling and sonorous, her playing outstanding in the work’s melodious continuity. With piano lines matched by Hall and Balzat in perfectly shaped phrases, tonal beauty and ensemble balance, NZTrio’s performance of this well-known work was as gorgeous as any I have heard and made a substantial and satisfying conclusion to a fascinating programme. Audience members were moved and delighted, offering a prolonged ovation.
NZTrio “Hypnotique” Amalia Hall (violin), Matthias Balzat (cello), Somi Kim (piano), music by Kats-Chernin, Fauré, Le Boeuf, Cresswell and Schoenberg, Wellington November 30, 2025. More information about NZTrio including 2026 tour dates here.