Buy the album

Visit Bruce Babcock’s website

Visit Trio Casals’ Facebook page

Visit my review page for Bruce Babcock’s Time and Again for Piano

Visit my review page for Bruce Babcock’s Alternative Facts

The narrative of Los Angeles-based American composer Bruce Babcock’s engaging new Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano “Nevertheless” is not so much its enigmatic, even passive aggressive title and real time story, as the tightrope of barely contained energy and powerful narrative colors that reap substance and satisfaction from the composer’s focused, descriptive writing.

Gusts of frisson and unease, masterfully organized meter patterns that stealthily trick the listener’s sensibility like an incident of vertigo, passages of tenuous but beautiful calm circled continuously by sub-basement leitmotifs of angst, and an emphatic if infrequent repetitive rumbling in the low register of the piano throughout the three-movement arc of the work that eloquently expresses both menace and frustration.

“In spite of that,” Babcock’s intriguing and beautifully constructed meditation on American misogyny composed in 2022 is if not a salve, at least a compassionate mirror upon our distinctly American troubles psychological and historical, over the course of the Republic’s fragile and still barely pubescent history. The piece is dedicated to women who have shown great perseverance, and carried on despite a global pandemic, a violent political insurrection, a war in Ukraine, and attacks on women’s healthcare and voting rights.

A particularly noxious incident on the floor of the US Senate in 2017 between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell triggered the composer’s inspiration for Nevertheless. The event is described succinctly in Babcock’s erudite program note for the piece. As a result of that encounter, the composer decided to examine through the prism of his distinctly personal sonic magical realism, the perseverance in that moment and countless others throughout American history demonstrated by women in their struggle to overcome literally man-made obstacles to equitable treatment under the law.

Babcock’s acute intellectual radar about important here and now historical anecdote has, with this new and impressive work, staked out the signage and sinew of our current, past, and future equal rights struggle in a three-movement sonic time capsule.

Composed specifically for Trio Casals – violinist Alexander Kislitsyn, cellist Ovidiu Marinescu, and pianist Anna Kislitsyna – and performed by the ensemble with incredible finesse, perfection of pitch, balance, style, and virtuosity on their 2023 Navona Records release, A Grand Journey: Works for Piano, Violin, and Cello Volume 2, Babcock has added a significant new masterpiece to the piano trio repertoire which deserves close attention and public exposure for its intelligent, well structured, and audience-informative gravity and integrity.

The first movement Allegro implies unease in its consistently stuttered meter, insistent rhythmic tension, and worried if not altogether dark tonality. Like walking on a frozen pond threatening fracture, there are moments glimpsed by the listener beneath the ice of sublime if passing beauty. An example of Babcock’s solid compositional savvy, the structure of this catalytic key to Nevertheless is comprehensively shaped, the soundscape tense but accessible to modern listeners without compromising emotional impact.

A low rustle in piano opens the second movement Moderato like scudding leaves at season’s change. Joined by cello as the piano tonality and temperament ascend, the two voices meet up with violin and the three co-mingle in a beautifully romantic if bittersweet ensemble of fragile intimacy that unwinds the listener a little from the unease of the first movement. Tempered by a palpable if short-lived hopefulness, it’s not long before a returning rumble in low keyboard and a brilliant if edgy staccato section for the three instruments, reminds the listener of antipathy’s inconstancy. The last few bars, serving as a raft of musical respite, is also the heart of Nevertheless. Well crafted, mature, and profoundly moving.

The last movement Presto begins with piano cascades, fiddle and cello adding pointillist bite to the mix as the three begin a wild, highly rhythmic, and sometimes perilous musical journey reminiscent of a ride through Sleepy Hollow. The movement is a froth of swirling nervous chase energy, skittering hither and yon. The three voices engage in fascinating musical thrusts and parries, weaving complicated hide-and-seek tracers of compositional and performance excitement, enhanced by the beautiful sound engineering on this recording.

Daniel Kepl | Performing Arts Review