Journées Musicales de Dieulefit - Trios en folie - 07/18/25

Felix Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49 

Johannes Brahms: Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8 

Trio Arborescence 

The Festival Mozart dans la Drôme is dead, long live the Journées Musicales de Dieulefit! Fact is, this year again, those annual “Musical Days” lived only three days, but it was better than nothing, and, most importantly, the concerts took place in Dieulefit, which was a most welcome change from the Festival Mozart, which had my mom and I drive at least half an hour each way every time we wanted to attend a performance. Manageable? Yes. Convenient, no. Worth the hassle? Definitely. 

So it was with immense pleasure that we got to downtown Dieulefit in five minutes by car and then hiked up a short cobblestone street to the charming little Église Saint-Pierre, which hosts Journées Musicales’ events every year. This year, however, we really had to grit our teeth and bear it as the association in charge of the event was even more disorganized than usual—which says a lot—with lost tickets, cascading miscommunications and utterly confused volunteers, all of which was blamed on computer glitches, of course, except that it was pretty clear that no computer had ever been used (if only). 

Eventually everybody got to their seat, or at least a seat, never mind the seats that had been double-booked. To make things a little bit more challenging, the one and only upper window that was supposed to open and give the musicians and the rest of us some reprieve from summer and body heat never did, so basically all we could do was to be grateful that no heat wave was going on and that the space was not completely packed. 

Nonplussed by all the logistic turmoil, which did not really affect them, and the stifling environment, which would affect them a lot, the Trio Arborescence, made of Journées Musicales’ long-time artistic director, as well as pianist and teacher, François Daudet, returning violinist Rachel Koblyakov, and newcomer cellist Florimond Dal Zotto, valiantly took the stage for what would be a promising-sounding evening of “Trios en folie”. 

The first episode of that “Trio Madness” would be the Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor by Felix Mendelssohn, a composer whose name IMO does not appear in concert programs as often as he should these days, except for his staunchly ubiquitous violin concerto. Although he died unfairly young, his œuvre is amazingly wide, varied and worth listening to, as the thrilling take of his Piano Trio we heard on Friday night proved without a doubt. Overflowing with endlessly rollicking melodies and sweeping romantic waves, the beautifully crafted piece filled the space with Mendelssohn’s enchanting music and spontaneously lifted everybody’s spirit up. 

It was seamlessly followed by another highly regarded trio of the chamber music repertoire in Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, which first came out in 1854, a few years after Mendelssohn’s work, before being revised much later in 1889. Fortunately, the older and even more pernickety Brahms was smart enough to preserve the original version’s youthful exuberance and glorious lyricism. A couple of new themes, deeper contrasts and subtle fine-tuning made the composition even more exciting, and we all happily benefited from it on Friday night thanks to the assured performance by the Trio Arborescence. 

After all had been played and done, the official program still felt kind of unfinished. For sure, calling it a night at that point would have been totally fair considering the two trios’ size and complexity, not to mention the less than conducive working conditions. The popular church is blessed with attractive decorations and excellent acoustics, but large audiences like ours quickly make it feel cramped and stuffy, and there’s only so much water the musicians can drink to be able to carry on. 

But apparently Daudet had decided to maximize the trio concept by adding a third substantial trio, not just a mere encore, with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G Minor. Composed as a single long movement that displays striking similarities to the first movement of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A Minor, this wonderful surprise was yet another foray into gorgeous Romantic territory, which the ensemble brought to life with the same amount of impeccable technique and emotional commitment as they did for the two previous pieces. And just like that, our Trio Madness experience concluded on an exquisitely soothing note.