Fidelio Trio Sha Tin Town Hall, May 31 Giving a recital in Sha Tin's small auditorium must be torturous for any group, no matter how talented. The sounds resonate like bells in a large silo, the audience has an average age of about 12, papers rattle, listeners walk out. So credit must be given to the Fidelio Trio for having finished their concert at all, and one could hardly blame them for the lack of an encore. Actually, this English-Irish group is not much older than the audience was, but their 20-odd years and a mere two years as a group give little indication of their nice playing. 'Nice' meaning Guildhall-trained technique, no problem in ensemble work and, most of all, thoroughly original playing. In fact it was only in the familiar, Beethoven 'Ghost' Piano Trio that one felt the Fidelio Trio was prosaic. The outer movements were played with all the right vigour (albeit a rushed, too urgent vigour). But that second movement, which gives the piece its nickname, demands more than sweet lyrical playing. This is Beethoven at his eeriest. Music originally written for the Ghost Scene of a projected Macbeth opera. The Fidelio people had the right intonation, but this demands an inner anxiety which such youthful players perhaps lack at this stage. The late Toru Takemitsu can be an ordeal. His 15-minute Between Tides was, like all his works, pure mood, perhaps caviar to the initiates but tedious to us lay folks. The Frank Bridge Phantasie Trio was a novelty, a four- movement piece in miniature. Most impressive was the Shostakovich Second Piano Trio. Each short movement was filled with agony, sarcasm and - in the final movement - what could only be called a demonic elegy. This was based on a Hasidic dance, inspired (if such be the word) by the Nazi demand that Jews dance on their grave. Even with scratchy violin playing, the music should have overcome this most fickle of audiences.
