Erica Jeal 

Eros: Bridge, Grime, Eröd and Ginastera album review – Mithras Trio’s debut is intriguing and eclectic

Young trio bring beautifully matched energy and impetus to these four works
  
  

Intriguing … Mithras Trio.
Intriguing … Mithras Trio. Photograph: Matthew Johnson

There’s some seriously good chamber music playing on this debut recording by the Mithras Trio, BBC New Generation artists who got together six years ago while studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

An intriguing and eclectic programme begins with Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Trio in C minor, concise yet substantial, and a fine showcase for the teamwork between violinist Ionel Manciu and cellist Leo Popplewell, who approach Bridge’s sweepingly romantic melodies with beautifully matched energy and impetus. It’s Dominic Degavino’s bell-like piano that initially sets the tone in Helen Grime’s 2011 Three Whistler Miniatures, intense pieces that unfold with Janáček-like spiky lyricism, Grime changing the music’s pace almost by sleight of hand. The Piano Trio No 1 by the Austrian-Hungarian composer Iván Eröd was written in 1976 but wouldn’t have sounded entirely out of place in a Parisian salon half a century before; the finale, which begins like a collision between Bartók and Dave Brubeck, sounds especially sparky thanks to Degavino’s rock-solid piano and Manciu’s feeling for a flourish. They sign off with Popplewell’s own elegant arrangement of Ginastera’s Danza de la Moza Donosa, the high cello twining around the violin like two dancers in a slow Argentine tango.

 

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