A friend of mine recently gave me this CD, (Ahn Trio, Ahn-Plugged) and I just got around to listening to it. It is simply fantastic. I don’t know how to describe it. Three sisters play classical music together, beautifully. Yet their selection of pieces runs the gammet: from Leonard Bernstein, to a film score by Michael Nyman, to a wonderful piece written by Pat Metheny. This is my new favorite CD of the moment. Check it out. Here is what Barnes & Noble had to say about it.
“It can’t be true that all happy families are happy in the same way. When three sisters play together so very nicely, and are smart enough to commission such glorious pieces for piano trio, their happiness must be truly unique. Pianist Lucia Ahn, her twin Maria on cello, and their sister Angella on violin play with a maturity and depth that reflects their many years together since they were featured in a 1987 Time cover story on “Asian-American Whiz Kids.” With Ahn-Plugged, they venture into brand-new territory, commissioning angular, amusing, and intelligent works from Kenji Bunch and Eric Ewazen and selecting offbeat but charming compositions from the existing repertory for trio. Leonard Bernstein’s very early Trio (1937) contains thematic seeds that came to fruition in his score for On the Town. Michael Nyman has made an arrangement of the signature theme from The Piano for the three sisters. Ewazen wrote a classical musician’s paean to ’60s rock ‘n’ roll, and Bunch created a 21st-century tribute to Morton Gould and his 20th-century orchestral aesthetic. The addition of percussion in these pieces and some dreamy short works by Astor Piazzolla allow the Ahns to venture into sonic textures and tempos not ordinarily heard in chamber music. What they retain from their study of traditional chamber music is their ability to create a oneness of spirit while each member still plays to her particular strengths, contributing to an apparently seamless whole of beauty, tact, and infinite variety.”
