Paddington Trio play Brighton – review

Judith Weir (b 1954), Your Light May Go Out (2004, 2nd movement of Piano Trio Two); Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-2027), Piano Trio in D Op70 No 1 ‘Ghost’ (1808); Arvo Pärt (b 1935), Mozart – Adagio (1992, revised 2005); and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), Piano Trio No 2 in E minor Op67 (1944)

Exciting but strange and fascinating things happened on Sunday. Not just within the music’s performance and presentation but in the listeners, too. Several forces were at work. And the Coffee Concerts audience suddenly gave a glimpse of what it could become if it could capitalise consistently on its venue location on the western edge of the Sussex University campus, in temporary exile from The Corn Exchange for renovation.

This audience is already rewarding to perform to, with its collective knowledge and love of the music they know, and their sponge-like interest in exploring and absorbing that which they don’t. But on Sunday, not only in customary play were the extra musical awareness and learnedness generated by the high-quality accompanying programme brochure notes, plus the contingent of practising or studying musicians listening. There were vital human elements.

Setting the scene, then: a sunny morning, still plenty of autumn leaf colour, the audience up from 140 in October (Covid then threatening comeback) to 206 now (Covid receding, lots of the audience booster- and flu-jabbed), 50 people deciding on the day to pay at the door – that total of 206 was around the pre-pandemic average for a piano trio Coffee Concert. Optimism in the air. A new academic intake year at Sussex University and noticeably more students coming to listen than are usually retained later on in the concert season. Freshman inquisitiveness?

A new young trio, just two years together, still studying and training, average age 25; an Irishman, a Scandinavian, an American. A programme shot through with death references or signals, the latter two works in memory of a close friend lost. Twice, first-time-at-the Coffee Concerts contemporary music preceded a mainstream 19th or 20th century item. In deference to these celebrated programme notes . . . “They’re best we’ve ever seen [at a chamber music concert], so we didn’t think we needed to say much more to the audience,” the Dubliner advised me. So all they said to the audience was the names of the two pieces of each half and the hope they would be enjoyed, before they started playing – so that the second item began without a single word. It was the violinist from Helsinki who, after saying hello, spoke at the outset. After the interval the pianist from Los Angeles did their introduction.

A thought. Is there a more humanly arresting classical composer than the deaf freedom-fighter Beethoven? Possibly there still isn’t. Yet in this particularly violent year, someone may be edging closer. Shostakovich. It was probably more than 15 seconds after the final bar of the morning’s music, before anyone dared break the dead silence. Hanging airborne was Shostakovich’s last utterance of his enthrallingly tormented second Piano Trio. Once released, the applause just grew. A first curtain call. A second. Cheering. Whoops. The students were after their gig encore. But normally more contained older regulars were getting swept up and rediscovering their youth. Children proudly joined in.