A Superstar Piano Trio at Davies

In my experience, chamber music in San Francisco's Davies Hall tends to get overwhelmed by the largeness of the theater, but last Thursday there was a major exception. The Thibaudet/Batiashvili/Capuçon Trio consists of three global superstar soloists, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet on piano, Lisa Batiashvili on violin, and Gautier Capuçon on cello. Putting soloist egos aside, the three have been playing together since 2018 and their joy in collaboration is obvious to behold.

They started a cross-country tour of the United States last week with a delightful program, starting with the rediscovered Piano Trio No. 1 in C Minor that a lovesick 16-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich composed in honor of a beloved. What's amazing is that the 15-minute work is instantly identifiable as Shostakovich, and like most of his early compositions, it's a complete delight.

Next was another rediscovered Piano Trio in G Majorr by Claude Debussy, written when he was 18 years old, and it sounds nothing like the composer of La Mer and Pelleas et Melisande. Scott Foglesong, the program annotator, notes: "Anyone expecting to hear a lost Debussy masterpiece is likely to be disappointed, for this lovely trio evokes the pastel elegance of Massenet and Delibes." Thibedaut in particular was masterful on piano all evening, shaping the tempos and never drowning out his two string colleagues.

After intermission, they played a big, serious 45-minute work, Antonin Dvorak's 1883 Piano Trio No. 3, and it was such a gripping performance that the audience burst into applause after three of the four movements. Thankfully, they also remained silent at the end of the heavenly third Poco Adagio movement before exploding at the finale. The trio never played too loudly to fill up the hall, but their sound was forceful enough to be heard even at its softest.

I have somehow missed Gautier Capuçon's many appearances with the SF Symphony over the years, but was always amused by how his publicity photos made him look like the ultimate French matinee idol. To my utter surprise, he actually looked the same in real life, and both his solo moments and interplay with the luminous Lisa Batiashvili were sublime. If you have a chance to catch the trio anywhere on this stateside tour, do so.