MUSIC

Amelia Piano Trio

The musical boundaries between East and West have been bashed away at for so long it's hard to tell where they are anymore. From the orientalisme of early-20th-century France to the postmodern work of composers like Tan Dun and Zhou Long, the border has long been a breeding ground for new ideas, and on Saturday evening the gifted young Amelia Piano Trio (as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series in Georgetown) presented a program called "East Meets West" that explored this music with passion and a playful sense of adventure.

Long thought to be lost, Debussy's early Piano Trio in G was recently reconstructed from fragments, and has emerged as an engaging if frustrating work. Beautifully played by the Amelia, it showed traces of Asia here and there, but never really approached the near-perfect orientalism of later works like "Pagodes."

The next work was more of a stretch. Mozart was all of 8 years old when he wrote his Sonata in F, K. 7, and it won't ever rank as one of mankind's most glorious achievements -- even when arranged for violin, cello and the two-stringed Chinese violin called the erhu. Wang Guowei turned in a flavorful account of this odd little curiosity. A more organic blending took place in the world premiere of "Scenes Through a Window" by the Chinese American composer Lu Pei. Written for piano trio, erhu and the traditional lute called the pipa, it's an extremely smart, colorful and kinetic piece that builds on traditional Chinese music without ever descending into sentimentality. Utterly graceful playing on the pipa by Yihan Chen made it even more delectable.

The evening closed with a sweeping reading of Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio in A Minor, an early transcultural masterpiece which draws on a popular Basque folk dance, Malaysian verse forms and styles from the baroque. The Amelia brought it off with exceptional clarity and elegance.

-- Stephen Brookes

Bob Mould

Bob Mould recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of his quitting Husker Du by posting, on his Web site, the breakup letter his lawyer had sent to his band mates' representatives all those years ago. Some fans still wish that document had never been written. But on Saturday, as the D.C. transplant rocked what for him is now a neighborhood nightspot, the 9:30 club, it sure seemed like the breakup has worked out well for the guy.

Mould, backed by a practiced trio and looking fabulous, threw material from every portion of his long career into the loud and powerful 90-minute set, though with some tinkering. He slowed down "Hanging Tree," a depressing rocker from 1990, to the point where the song's guitar riff became so heavy that even a bulky gym rat like Mould would have trouble bench-pressing it. And for Sugar's fabulous pop tune "Hoover Dam," Mould turned some of the guitar parts over to keyboard player Richard Morel, whose baroque licks recalled "Tarkus"-era Keith Emerson.

Mould even reworked stuff from his newest record, "District Line." "Again and Again," now carried by Mould's electric guitar, sounded less like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" than on the disc, and it has to be the bleakest breakup song ever written for the upper middle class: "I left the title to the house inside the piano bench/and my lawyer's got the will," Mould groaned.

He'd gotten all the dark stuff out of his system in time for the power-pop bliss of "Paralyzed," then closed with a gaggle of Husker Du songs -- "I Apologize" and "Divide and Conquer" among them. Neither he nor the fans, including those still tilting at windmills for a reunion, or even just a box set from the long-dead band, could stop smiling.