{"id":114440,"date":"2025-05-20T11:50:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T15:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=114440"},"modified":"2025-05-20T19:37:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T23:37:50","slug":"scrutiny-arkel-chamber-concerts-pianist-philip-chiu-bring-colours-schubert-kevin-laus-piano-trios-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2025\/05\/20\/scrutiny-arkel-chamber-concerts-pianist-philip-chiu-bring-colours-schubert-kevin-laus-piano-trios-life\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Arkel Chamber Concerts & Pianist Philip Chiu Bring The Colours of Schubert And Kevin Lau\u2019s Piano Trios to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Arkel
Arkel Chamber Concerts with special guest pianist Philip Chiu (Photo courtesy of Arkel Chamber Concerts)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Arkel Chamber Concerts: Under a Veil of Stars. Franz Schubert: piano trio in E flat; Kevin Lau: piano trio. Winona Zelenka, cello; Marie B\u00e9rard, violin; Philip Chiu, piano. May 18, 2025, Trinity St-Paul\u2019s Centre, Toronto.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A week after the cherry blossoms bloomed, when the city became gloomy again, the prospect of hearing Schubert played live on a Sunday afternoon promised to be a delight.<\/p>\n

But, before we heard the music of that master, we were met with the concert\u2019s namesake: Kevin Lau\u2019s Under A Veil of Stars, a 25-minute piano trio made up of three dreamy movements.<\/p>\n

Kevin Lau: Piano Trio<\/h3>\n

In the show\u2019s opening remarks, co-founder and violinist Marie Berard told the audience it was based on a short story by Lau about a girl who chases and catches stars. With that image in mind, then, we are ushered into the piece, which, along with B\u00e9rard, is wonderfully brought to life by co-founder and cellist Winona Zelenka and the guest of the Arkel Chamber Concert, the acclaimed pianist Philip Chiu, whose graceful, nimble fingers are well-suited to evoke the image of the stars, which, by turns, twinkle and burst, eliciting his impassioned head jerks.<\/p>\n

Chiu is the kind of pianist whose hands, having dashed off a note, remain suspended in the air for some time, recovering from the impact of its utterance, a notable gesture of his.<\/p>\n

B\u00e9rard, elegant, whose violin gave voice to anxiety in the work, trilled and thrilled.<\/p>\n

But near the end of the first movement, it is Zelenka, in her modest outfit, whose instrument gets the chance to shine. In a solo that evoked the \u201cunabashed romanticism\u201d and \u201csimmering emotions\u201d B\u00e9rard had advantageously warned us to be sensitive to, she ravishes.<\/p>\n

The cello channeled the message of the piece, which \u2014 before our eyes and within our ears \u2014 matured, movement to movement, from juvenile bewilderment to adolescent resentment and finally to lived-in grief, where refrains from the past can glimmer at the edges of the mind.<\/p>\n

What I admired about the piano trio was witnessing the way the music circulated through the instruments, so that there were moments they were in complete harmony, and others when they conjured up a dark discordance, punctuated by plucked strings and eighth notes.<\/p>\n

For long stretches Lau\u2019s work can appear to be ambiguous, impenetrable, until, all of a sudden, it springs into action: racing, whirling, transcending towards states of transcendence.<\/p>\n

The third movement, In That Shoreless Ocean\u2026, is based on Rabindranath Tagore\u2019s poem \u201cSail Away,\u201d which ends, \u201cWho knows when the chains will be off\/and the boat\/like the last glimmer of sunset, vanish into the night?\u201d In the final movement, Lau slows things down and allows the uncertainty of that final line to announce itself through the Chiu\u2019s dramatic flair, which expresses its wit and mischievousness en route to the piece\u2019s tempered, tranquil end.<\/p>\n

Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2<\/h3>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had enough applause,\u201d Chiu said after the intermission, during his introduction of Schubert\u2019s Piano Trio No.2 in E-flat Major.<\/p>\n

Through a series of facts \u2014 his early death, his syphilis, his reputation as a curmudgeon \u2014 Chiu declared Schubert \u201cthe most emo of composers\u201d and a \u201cpoet-painter\u201d (a term which curiously echos the \u201cpianist-painter\u201d La Presse had dubbed Chiu himself).<\/p>\n

It remains true that Schubert succeeds in evoking a stirring sense of melancholy, which is most evident in the second movement, the infamous \u201cAndante Con Moto,\u201d nearly 200 years after its first public performance. It was in these moments that the performance of the piece enhanced the beauty of it; first Chiu plays a refrain, followed by Zelenka, then B\u00e9rard \u2014 an order which Schubert, masterfully, reverses in the fourth movement, \u201cAllegro moderato,\u201d creating the sensation that they build upon each other\u2019s articulation individually before forming a collective.<\/p>\n

Their classical interpretation of the piano trio meant the piece remained familiar, resulting in moments when it was easy to lose one\u2019s attention in the sunny opulence, where the images of ballrooms, candlelight, and silk dresses from films like Barry Lyndon appeared before our eyes.<\/p>\n

What I gleaned about Schubert was the way that his music behaved, which, similar and complimentary to Lau\u2019s sensibility, seemed to replicate a mind traversing through a crowd, taking in the world around them, before turning inwards and travelling down digressive trains of thought that are suddenly \u2014 and this is its revitalizing effect \u2014 disrupted by a buoyant spirit that, despite its strength, can never fully escape a pure despair that exists deep within each of us.<\/p>\n

In the fourth movement, the force of Berard\u2019s violin comes to the fore, leading the conversation among them, alternately synchronizing and devolving to a purely ecstatic effect.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n

Near the end of the performance, as a musical phrase once again travelled between them like a secret, I looked up at the high ceilings of the Trinity St. Paul\u2019s Centre and the sun shone bright through the stain-glass, and just then the trio\u2019s refrain, which, up until then, had been mournful, turned blithe.<\/p>\n

This moment reminded me of a scene early on in Henry James\u2019 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady, when Isabel Archer, in search of her aunt throughout Gardencourt and fearing her uncle may be dead, is given pause by \u201can unexpected sound \u2014 the sound of low music proceeding apparently from the saloon.\u201d She enters the room and discovers Madame Merle \u201cplaying something of Schubert\u2019s \u2014 Isabel knew not what, but recognized Schubert \u2014 and she touched the piano with a discretion of her own.\u201d<\/p>\n

After her performance, Isabel praises her, adding that her sickly uncle would benefit from hearing such lovely music, but Madame Merle discriminates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m afraid there are moments in life when even Schubert has nothing to say to us,\u201d she says to her: \u201cWe must admit, however, that they are our worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a pleasure it was then, that afternoon, to not have been in one of those moments, but to have had the privilege and pleasure to be in that one, where we could hear what Lau had to say and hear again \u2014 thus anew \u2014 to Schubert too: a re-affirmation that three is a magic number.<\/p>\n

By: Nirris Najendrarajah for LvT<\/strong><\/p>\n

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What a pleasure it was then, that afternoon to have had the privilege and pleasure to hear what Lau had to say and Schubert too: a re-affirmation that three is a magic number.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":114442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41660,10,76,18,19,38,47,52,63],"tags":[41482,1860,4570],"yst_prominent_words":[23297,14119,7141,13447,13464,28546],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/05\/Copy-of-REVIEW-7.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-tLO","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114440"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114458,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114440\/revisions\/114458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114440"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=114440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}