Ahn Piano Trio Has a Solid Outing

A dominant musical gene has obviously left its imprint on the sisters Ahn, originally from South Korea. The Ahn Piano Trio--violinist Angella and the twins, pianist Lucia and cellist Maria--showed up Saturday at El Camino College and showed why it has become a prime contender in the slim ranks of piano trios.

The string players produce a gorgeous tone, Lucia has a solid grasp of the piano, and together they coax a collective, dynamically flexible sound that gets us thinking about the bonding power of family. All that was missing was a sense of daring in the programming department, which leaned toward cozy Romantic contours.

Composer Josef Suk’s Elegie in D-flat major opened the program on a soft, bittersweet note. The pulse quickened with Leonard Bernstein’s Trio for Violin, Violoncello and Piano, an obscurity written when Bernstein was 19, in 1937. What it lacks in cohesion, it makes up for in verve. The work has enough going for it--especially in the impassioned hands of this trio--to qualify as a lost little gem.

In the second half, the trio showed its finest stuff on one of the pillars of the repertory, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Opus 50. It’s almost two works in one, between the grand sweep of the first movement and an extended set of variations on the theme of a simple Russian folk song.

Oddly, the encores had little to do with the preceding activity. A Korean pop tune and a bland, “what’s the point?” arrangement of “Hey Jude” ended an otherwise solid concert with a thud.