Lincoln love: Chicago inspirations for a hometown piano-violin-cello trio

Aznavoorian (from left), Cunliffe, and Ruhstrat

So much an ornament and future inspiration in Haydn's chamber music, the piano trio has been an enduring combination up to the present day. Commissioning new music as well as mining the inherited repertoire, well-honed professional trios  continue to refresh the inheritance.

Based in Chicago and recorded by the Cedille Records organization based there, the Lincoln Trio has recently saluted the personal heritage of its members with the Grammy-nominated "Trios from our Homelands," in addition to several other Cedille recordings shared with other artists.

A new recording meshes the group's professional activity with its hometown as closely as possible: "Trios From Contemporary Chicago" includes three premiere recordings of works written for Desiree Ruhstrat, violin; David Cunliffe, cello, and Marta Aznavoorian, piano. The Chicago connection is particularly inspired by three sites depicted in the opening piece. Shawn E. Okpebholo's "city beautiful" (the lower-case habit with titles seems well-established among today's composers) opens with "aqua," which turns the wavy exterior of the 82-story Aqua Tower into a musical portrait. 

The loyalty to the visual impact is thorough, as the booklet's cover art confirms, and is carried through in the most devoted musical manner. The piece privileges flow and a sustained feeling for curvature in phrasing and dynamics.

Robie House: the inspiration for Okpebholo's "prairie"

More abstract symbolism and spacious writing comes in the second movement, '"prairie," named for the distinctive Frank Lloyd Wright style embodied in his Robie House in Hyde Park. The widely separated intervals, outlining the kinds of harmonies familiar in Aaron Copland's music,  capture the jutting angles and geometric rigor of the architecture. The bustling atmosphere of Union Station is celebrated in the finale, "burnham," named for the landmark terminal's architect.

Tourism takes a back seat in the  rest of the program. The much-recorded Stacy Garrop is represented by "Sanctuary," an expansive personal piece evoking her father. It depends not so much on direct memories, the composer says, as on her process of collecting reminiscences of Norman Garrop from family and friends. Nonetheless, the symbolic search of a child for response from a trusted adult fashions the framework of the composition, which consists of two movements tellingly labeled "Without" and "Within." The expressionist aesthetic that governs the piece is not the fashion now, and listeners used to new music of a terser cast, even when the emotions involved are outsized, may be put off. By the third hearing, I was more tolerant of what had initially seemed self-indulgent or simply too extravagant.

I have greater learned sympathy with the more compact intensity of Shulamit Ran's "Soliloquy."  Though it relates to an opera by the composer, there is considerable distance from autobiography in the work's development and its judicious swerve away from the staged context. Its mysterious start unfolds deliberately but without any sign of stalling. The recorded performance is typical of the Lincoln Trio's unerring balance and natural feeling for momentum.

Augusta Read Thomas  and Mischa Zupko have  the shortest works on the recording. In both cases, however, the impact is far from  trivial; they hold their own in this company. Zupko's "Fanfare 80" has a series of upward-flashing phrases in the celebratory manner its title promises. The piano-trio version is one of several, and "Fanfare 80" in this recording projects the likelihood of this music's being at home in any one of its incarnations. 

The two fleet movements of  Thomas' "...a  circle round the sun..." (stylish: ellipsis bookends plus lower case!) feature a smooth transition between the "Elegant and spacious" first movement and the summing-up "Dance-like, playful, and lyrical" finale. The movement lives up to its heading in the way its forward push is slightly blocked, as if by a fun distraction, then gets spurred ahead toward unforced joy.

The disc finds the Lincoln Trio fully responsive to what is clearly a wide spectrum of intentions, procedures and results in contemporary writing for the piano trio by five creative Chicagoans.