Washington Classical Review

Trio Azura performed Tuesday night at the Phillips Collection, presented by Young Concert Artists. Photo: Shervin Lainez

The closure of the Kennedy Center has forced Young Concert Artists to trade the clear sightlines and cushy seats of the center’s Terrace Theater for the intimate setting and dazzling décor of the Phillips Collection’s Music Room, the series’ new home for its 2026-2027 fall concerts.

On Tuesday night, YCA presented Trio Azura, which formed in 2022 at the Colburn School in Los Angeles and has been gathering accolades ever since. The trio’s DC debut proved that, regardless of venue, YCA remains uncannily good at identifying and presenting early-career standouts.

Opening with Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio, the Azurans showed the power of understatement. Pianist Yanfeng (Tony) Bai provided space around his playing, leaving Ravel’s melodies intriguingly equivocal; violinist Duncan McDougall and cellist Yejin Hong matched tones so well they almost sounded like one instrument. The trio played both the striding first theme and the more reflective second theme with keen attention to Ravel’s supple, shifting rhythmic pulse. Hong played the second theme in the recapitulation with striking eloquence, leading into a magical coda.

Ravel modeled his second movement after the pantoum, a Malaysian verse form, but Ravel’s interpretation sounds like a traditional scherzo minus the repetitions. Trio Azura played with attention to the form, but also quicksilver agility that brought out Ravel’s wit.

The Passacaille third movement demands solemnity, and the trio met that challenge as well. Bai laid down the simple ground-bass theme with utmost concentration, matched by the violin and cello in the later elaborations. The trio played the fourth movement attacca, bursting from the Passacaille’s gravity into music that flies around almost recklessly, with McDougall and Hong playing ecstatic extended trills and Bai sparkling in support.

Jennifer Higdon’s 2003 Piano Trio depicts colors in music. “Pale Yellow” is luminous, with spacious, bright harmonies and a sweet, yearning melody, which the Azurans played with the same focus and color every time it appeared. By contrast, “Fiery Red” felt loaded with tension even in its quiet passages, of which there were few. Here the trio played precisely even when directed to play roughly, with McDougall and Hong matching their scrapes and volleys as Bai showed his percussive abilities.

Bai told Tuesday’s audience that the ensemble played part of Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor for their YCA auditions, and they seemed pleased to perform the entire work to close the program. The first movement started out bristling with dark energy, which the players balanced with an affecting reading of the romantic second theme. The transition from development to recapitulation feels like a little magic trick in the right hands, and the Trio Azura found that magic, leading to a magnetic, searching performance of the lengthy coda.

Bai began the Andante espressivo second movement with a solo that sounded like one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, and McDougall and Hong maintained the direct, unaffected lyricism as the movement progressed. The trio took the following Scherzo at a blistering pace, yet never sounded rushed, bringing out a furtive, cryptic feel similar to the Scherzo in the composer’s Octet.

Mendelssohn’s Allegro appassionato finale begins with a suitably intense theme, delivered with full, round tone by both McDougall and Hong in turn, but a chorale based on Doxlogy interrupts twice. The first time, Bai made it seemingly emerge from shadow; the second time, Bai, McDougall, and Hong made it into an epiphany, turning the movement from minor to major and propelling it to a triumphant close.

Trio Azura presented the second movement of Joaquín Turina’s Piano Trio No. 2 as an encore, or “dessert,” as Bai called it. Short and fizzy, with strumming and plucking aplenty, it indeed made an appropriate final course after the hearty Mendelssohn — another thoughtful choice in a concert full of them. Trio Azura is clearly a young chamber ensemble to watch.

Young Concert Artists presents Trio Azura in the same program at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on October 14. The next YCA concert in Washington features violinist Claire Wells and pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera at the Phillips on November 17. yca.org