The Chamber's Shostakovich shines

All of which helps explain why the performance of Shostakovich's Piano Trio in E minor, the other piece in Sunday's concert at Sanders Theatre - cut like a knife into bone. And why, at the end of it, three-quarters of the audience was on its feet, as if it had been given the gift of life.

From the keening opening with high harmonics in the cello immediately you are in another world. Shostakovich plumbs the depths of lonely despair. (It was written during World War II, and he lost his best friend in the middle of composing it.) But it is a vision full of contrasts and ironies, with the composer's special rhythmic vitality. The final "allegretto" begins as a folk dance and becomes, in its mocking repetition of the basic figure, a razzing of the nose at authority. (It's hard to know exactly what led Stalin's commissars to ban this work, but I like to think that was it.) Harumi Rhodes, the guest violinist, was a riveting presence in her command of every difficulty, economy of gesture, and smooth, natural tone, with a minimum of vibrato. Randall Hodgkinson was dark and dramatic in the demanding piano part.

Indeed, Hodgkinson performed heroically through a long and challenging evening. Perhaps he lacked the ultimate in Mozartian elegance - cadenzas and runs were a bit blurry and, favoring the melodic treble over the bass, he made the piano a solo voice instead of a piece of the foundation (it is surely both). Sanders's dry acoustics are hard on the piano, especially the bass, and the piano did not resound ideally in the Brahms. There were beautiful string textures from Jennifer Frautschi, violin, Wilhelmina Smith, cello, and Marcus Thompson, viola. At other times, the ensemble was almost overstretched. Or was it my ears? After the Shostakovich, Brahms's gorgeous, neatly folded harmonies were hard to take, like a pleasant conversation after a bomb has gone off in the neighborhood.