The Canellakis-Brown Duo—cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist Michael Brown—have been playing together for ten years and it shows. Their concert Tuesday night at the Baruch Performing Arts Center was a superb display of the kind of assured, responsive, sincere playing that is a pinnacle of chamber music performance yet is more often heard in jazz and other music than in classical.

For those of us who had not been ANYWHERE south this winter, Sunday’s Rockport Music Shalin Liu Hall provided a cure for the midwinter blues with an inspired and inspiringly-played concert by a quartet of four extraordinarily gifted friends who have played together in various permutations; they should really take it on the road.

It was Beethoven, Shostakovich, Chopin and Brown that the audience had come to hear, and these performances were serious and thoughtful. The two play with their antennae tuned to each other. Where needed, Brown shaped piano phrases like a bowed instrument, easily mirrored by matching cello lines, while Canellakis found ways to delineate legato passages with a pianistic sort of voice-leading.

"Beethoven's Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano in C Major featured the Brown-Urioste-Canellakis Trio, young award-winning musicians who wowed the audience with their musicianship and stage presence."

"Michael Brown’s impressive “Two Movements for Cello and Piano” is the product of a confident young composer with a talent for precision."

The three young soloists were outstanding — Elena Urioste, violin, Nicholas Canellakis, cello (and the brother of the conductor) and Michael Brown, piano. They played with great familiarity with each other's technique, the cellist being the strongest of the three. Canellakis was, in fact, outstanding in his playing, with a sweet tone and vivacious accuracy. 

The most interesting music was with the soloists, whose intricate melodies blended so well, while the orchestra mainly was accompaniment, except at crucial loud tutti sections.