At a classical music concert, something actually new, and also its challenges

When I say that a performer plays music as if it sounds new, I generally mean it as a compliment. The Atos Trio, which played at the Library of Congress on Friday night, was unusual in that it made everything sound new in the sense of being different and even odd. When they approached Beethoven's "Archduke Trio," which concluded the concert, it was with the sense of a space alien picking up some seemingly innocuous object, like a flower, and examining it from every angle with the goal of trying ...