A special guest for Schumann

You can't really hold an ad-hoc ensemble like this one, with limited opportunity for rehearsals, to the same standards of nuance one might use to judge a veteran piano trio, but this threesome made a reasonably strong case for this seldom-heard work, bringing vigor and lucidity to its bright outer movements and a warm lyricism to the inner ones. Lowe's playing was polished and incisive; one wished at times for more assertiveness from Eskin, but his tone was unerringly sweet and resonant; and Andsnes played with his typical intelligence and pellucid grace. For those keeping track, the Claremont Trio is also working its way through the trios of Schumann and Brahms in an ongoing series at the Gardner Museum, concluding March 16.

After intermission came an even more rarely heard work: Manuel de Falla's stage pantomime "El Corregidor y la Molinera" ("The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife"), an early incarnation, premiered in 1917, of the composer's popular ballet "The Three-Cornered Hat." Its stripped-down scoring for small chamber orchestra - in this case 12 players plus mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy - was originally born of wartime necessity, but it also works well on its own terms, bringing out the taut construction of Falla's exceedingly colorful score with all of its witty instrumental flourishes. More generally, this is precisely the kind of work that the Boston Symphony Chamber Players should be taking on: seldom heard yet deserving music whose scoring requires a depth of personnel that only an ensemble drawn from a full orchestra can easily provide.