Carnegie Hall review: The Tao of Wittgenstein

from Susan Hall:

The Junction Trio’s Carnegie Hall debut reflected the wide-ranging tastes and temperaments of pianist Conrad Tao, violinist Stefan Jackiw and cellist Jay Campbell. Jagged beauty and harsh dissonance are characterized in each of the compositions by John Zorn, Charles Ives and Ludwig van Beethoven.

In Zorn’s Philosophical Investigations everyone plucks, including Tao inside the piano sounding board.
Conrad Tao is an arresting figure. You can’t take eyes or ears off him. His technique is gargantuan and subtle. His physical approach to the piano is a dancer’s. It is not exaggerated, but you follow his movement and enter the world he proposes. Of particular delight is a withheld note or phrase, where you
hang in the air, in delicious suspense, awaiting the conclusion. The Zorn work dangles moments of
lyric beauty with the crashes of chaos.

Ives starts out commenting on an old professor: 27 measures are played with different combinations of the strings and piano. Tone chords accompany a melody in another key. Jackiw suggests that Ives heard multiple bands circling a town square as a boy. The Beethoven Archduke Trio is full of humour, bouncing staccatos and flowing melodies.

These composers never let the listener rest. Yet who wants to when the Junction Trio is in action? Conrad Tao will tour Amsterdam, Hamburg and Berlin late this summer with the Kansas City Orchestra.