World-class brotherhood
5:00AM
Thursday April 10, 2008
By William Dart
The Eggner Trio had a larger than usual audience.
What: Eggner Trio
Where: Auckland Town Hall
Perhaps the single most pleasing thing about the Eggner Trio's Tuesday concert was that the audience seemed to be larger than is usual for Chamber Music New Zealand.
Frankly, it is about time Aucklanders were aware of the superlative quality of CMNZ's programme; they bring us world-class artists and, for a couple of hours, without excessive wallet damage, we could imagine ourselves transported to a capacious version of Wigmore Hall.
So it was when Georg, Florian and Christoph Eggner introduced themselves with the first seductive lines of Beethoven's Opus 70 No 2. It was every bit as sweet as Beethoven requests and the propulsive energy a few lines ahead was all the more dramatic; Christoph Eggner's punched-out offbeats flew like sparks from a winter fire.
In the more outgoing passages of the Allegretto, the three men achieved an impressive solidity of sound without sacrificing grace, and revelled in the piquant colorations of the Schubertian third movement.
