The Classical Music Guide Forums

On Monday, July 26, the Lions Gate Trio (violinist Katie Lansdale, cellis Marcy Rosen, pianist Florence Millet) performed at the Lake Luzerne Chamber Music Festival in that town, which neighbors mine. This festival is associated with a music camp for high school students and is run by Philadelphian Toby Blumenthal. It was founded by her and her late husband Bert Phillips, a cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Monday night chamber series brings world class performers to this neck of the woods.

The performances were excellent throughout and require no elaborative comment. The program began with the Haydn Trio No. 39 in G Major, Hob. XV/25, the last movement of which (marked "Rondo a l'Ongarese: Presto) is quite humorous and could have been cited in one of our threads on humor in music.

For those who enjoy a snooze as part of the concert experience, the group moved on to Dvorak's Trio No. 4 in E Minor ("Dumky"). Let me state that there are Dvorak chamber works that I take seriously and enjoy listening to, including other piano trios, but when the man was in a folksy mood, he could bore with the best of them.

For the sake of giving you a complete report, I forced myself to stay until after the intermission to hear the Brahms Trio in B Major, Op. 8 (had you going for a sec, didn't I?).

Sorry you don't like the Dumky Trio, John. I played it years ago and thought it has some gorgeous music. Maybe if at least one movement was in sonata-allegro, or variation form, instead of all dumkys that would have been nice, but that's not what he wrote!

It is very well-crafted for what it is--all right, even that is too faint praise--and I realize that they are all original compositions of Dvorak in the style of Dumky (as opposed to arrangements), but such things are not my cup of tea for concert programming. I even count a Brahms Hungarian Dance as being good mainly as an encore.