Karlo Margetić: Lightbox (2012)

Rachel Clement: shifting states (2003)

i. sabbia (sand)

ii. filigrana (filigree)

iii. bullicante (with bubbles)

iv. millefiori (thousand flowers)

v. sommerso (submerged)

Alex Taylor: burlesques mécaniques (2012)

i. prologue

ii. [d]rag

iii. interlude

iv. a spanner

v. tumbledry

vi. gas/sisyphus

vii. tic

viii. anglegrinder

ix. chain

x. scaffold

Gao Ping: Su Xie Si Ti (Four Sketches, 2009)  

i. Xiao (Boisterous)

ii. Cuo Diao (Split Melody)

iii. Dui Wei (Counterpoint

iv. Shuo (Shining)

Samuel Holloway: Stapes (2005) 

Chris Gendall: Intaglio (2006) 

i.

ii.

iii.

Claire Cowan: subtle dances (2013)

 i. subtle dances

ii. be slow and lie low

iii. nerve lines

Total playing time 74:26

Take a bow

On their third album for Rattle, NZTrio are again in their performance element tilling the fertile soil of some of New Zealand brightest emerging composers. The title track is a multi-layered and hued piece by Karlo Margetic, where a simple piano melody sets an almost searching tone, taken up by spiraling violin and cello and repeated in ever more probing variations. It’s the most intense and gripping of the seven compositions, which also feature Samuel Holloway’s tautly-strung and wrung Stapes and Gao Ping’s Su Xie Si Tu (Four Sketches), which he says was inspired by seeing a funeral procession in rural China.

Take a bow Justine Cormack, Ashley Brown and Sarah Watkins.

Mike Alexander – Sunday Star Times

Top local ensemble stunningly updates the Kiwi piano trio

There’s a delicious convergence of the arts on NZTrio’s new Lightbox CD, tantalisingly wrapped in the scuffed fluoro hues of Jim Speers’ English Electric.

Speers’ prize-winning sculpture is a lightbox, and such is the presence of this Rattle recording that, thanks to producer Wayne Laird and engineer Steve Garden, with a little bit of whimsy, you might well imagine your speakers as sources of sonic illumination.

This stunning follow-up to NZTrio’s first album of New Zealand music, 2005’s Spark, brings us up to date with seven works from the past decade.

Karlo Margetic’s title piece, which won the 2013 SOUNZ Contemporary Award, is a whirlwind of exhilaration. Moments of calm allow us to eavesdrop on fluctuating relationships between the players.

Drawing inspiration from the processes of glassmaking, Rachel Clement’s Shifting States is ingeniously tinted and textured, especially when the blurred opening of Millefiori breaks free into exultant, high-flying counterpoint.

You don’t need to see NZTrio perform Alex Taylor’s burlesques mécaniques to be drawn into these edgy dances. With the shortest being just a few seconds, every sound counts; Taylor has the ear and terrier-like tenacity to make the most of every note.

Although Gao Ping is now settled in Beijing, his Su Xie Si Ti was commissioned by NZTrio in 2009. Exoticism rules, especially when the musicians immerse themselves in the languorous orientalisms of Dui Wei.

Stapes takes us to the intense world of Samuel Holloway. This is restless, moody music, tethered and tended on the borderline; we hear thematic whispers, sounds that melt and deteriorate before our ears, chords vanishing into the distance.

Chris Gendall’s Intaglio does for printmaking what Clement did for glass. Three short pieces inspired by the connection between ink, plate and paper, are etched with the composer’s customary precision, sense of line and balance of sound and silence.

Claire Cowan’s Subtle Dances is the perfect closer. The ghosts of Piazzolla and Ravel hover over dancehall and ballroom, in an elegant nostalgia that suggests it might be possible to move forward into the past.

5 stars

William Dart – The New Zealand Herald