Midway through the hectoring Scherzo of Ives's Trio, my long-suffering wife burst into the front room; ''This must be a joke!'' she exclaimed, evidently astonished at what she was hearing. And when I referred to David Grayson's exhaustive notes, I gleefully discovered that her reaction was spot-on: ''TSIAJ'', the movement's subtitle, actually stands for ''This Scherzo is a Joke''. So much for musical clairvoyance! Initiates will, of course, already know what to expect: ''games and antics by the students on a holiday afternoon'' with not far short of two dozen tunes quoted, including My Old Kentucky Home and Long, Long Ago. It is an ingenious, good-humoured cacophony, brilliantly arranged, but it ends fairly happily and soon gives way to a quarter-hour finale, ''partly a remembrance of a Sunday service on the Campus''. I always have the feeling that Ives's only way of coping with his love for the 'old tunes' was to send them up; yet he did so with such aplomb, daring and imagination that one can't help but respond gratefully.
Ives's Trio is the final work in Yo-Yo Ma's absorbing programme. The first, Bernstein's wartime Clarinet Sonata, was arranged with the composer's authorization and is pure delight from start to finish: mild, melodious and ultimately high-spirited, it falls easily on the ear and makes us regret all the more that a planned Trio for Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax was never completed (although sketches for the work do apparently exist). Which leaves Gershwin and Kirchner, the former represented by a sensuous re-working of Heifetz's famous Prelude transcriptions, the latter (with whom Ma studied at Harvard) by an astonishingly outspoken Triptych. Scored, respectively, for ''Cello Solo'' and ''Violin and Cello Obbligato'' (the movement subtitles), Triptych ends with a vigorous Presto. I would guess that Kodaly's highly demonstrative solo and duo sonatas lay somewhere at the back of Kirchner's mind, and yet the voice is individually distinctive, while Lefkowitz and Ma tackle the middle piece as if their minds and fingers were one. The rest, too, is superbly performed, the Ives being particularly adroit (I've never heard a more convincing performance of it), the Gershwin smoochy and playful. This is the sort of recital that had me reaching for The Classical Catalogue in search of more—so let's hope that Ma and his friends won't be too long in supplying it.'