What’s so myriad about the Myriad Trio? A group consisting of only three performers—Demarre McGill on flute, Che-Yen Chen on viola, and Julie Smith on harp—isn’t myriad. You can only combine those instruments in 6 different ways, and there isn’t exactly a myriad of compositions to choose from among the duos and trios they can perform. Perhaps it’s best not to ponder the origin of their name too much: just sit back and listen—the musical artistry that this threesome produces overpowers any cognitive dissonance provoked by their moniker.

There isn’t any repertory for this unusual ensemble before the last century. The earliest instance of writing for this trio is likely Debussy’s 1915 Sonata for flute, harp, and viola; ever since, composers and arrangers have written for this combination, although few clear the bar that Debussy set so high with his masterpiece.

If there was one work on Monday’s program at Conrad Prebys Hall which could claim an equal footing with Debussy’s Sonata, that would be And Then I knew ‘Twas Wind by Toru Takemitsu. The music Takemitsu wrote in the last 2 decades of his life was probably the closest any composer has ever come to capturing the sheer sonic allure and mysterious elusiveness of form with which Debussy was unrivalled.

In Takemitsu’s trio, eerie chords float in unpredictable yet tranquil rhythms. The harp rustles, then inscrutably stops, leaving chords suspended into silence. The viola and flute snake sinuous melodies on top of and in between the harp’s ringing. The music changes, branches off in unexpected directions, always with a Japanese grace and poise, beautiful asymmetries shifting, moving—enigmatic serenities. For a dozen minutes or so, one is immersed in calm, inexplicable beauty.

Debussy’s music appeared on the program, in an arrangement by the famous harpist, Carlos Salzedo. Children’s Corner Suite was composed for the piano; as a composer for piano, Debussy transformed the instrument and its literature with his reconsiderations of pianistic sonorities. In transcribing work so perfectly composed for the grand piano, Salzedo illegitimately transmogrified Debussy’s music; this trio really should be called, Debussy’s Bastard Child’s Corner Suite.

Is it charming? Yes. Would a listener unfamiliar with the original care about this transformation? Probably not. For pianists and listeners acquainted with Children’s Corner Suite, Salzedo’s arrangement doesn’t really work—the harp is not capable of producing rapid, crisp staccato notes, nor can it successfully mimic the wondrous resonance of a depressed damper pedal.

Salzedo was a prolific composer for harp, and came up with a number of innovative performance techniques, some of which were on display. Harp strings were rasped and soundboards rapped, in addition to more conventional methods of tone production such as bell-like harmonics or dry sounds produced by plucking near the base of the strings. These little touches whetted the appetite to hear some of Salzedo’s more experimental works, and Julie Smith clearly has the chops to do justice to them.

The other arrangement on the program was Beethoven’s Serenade, op. 25, which was originally for flute, violin, and viola, and a useful reminder that not everything the great man wrote was dripping with import. Substituting the harp (an instrument whose notes fade away as soon as they’re played) for the violin (an instrument capable not only of sustaining a note, but making it grow louder after first being attacked) loses a little of Beethoven’s intent, and yet, because the music is so mindlessly pleasant, the arrangement is serviceable.

The concert opened with Bax’s Elegiac Trio, a work which strangely enough was written only 6 months after the first performance of Debussy’s Sonata; it is highly unlikely Bax knew anything about Debussy’s unorthodox instrumentation, making this a bizarre musical coincidence. It is a charming enough work, with plaintive modal melodies and harmonies, conventional writing for the harp, and in form both rhapsodic and episodic.

Andre Jolivet is a 20th-century composer whose music got lost in the shuffle among the big 20th-century innovators, falling somewhere between Messiaen’s early primitivism and sensuality, and Neo-Classicism. In Jolivet’s early works, there is an exhilarating savagery, a beguiling exoticism, but in his Petite Suite, Jolivet’s musical Fauvism was tempered by a more classical restraint. He wrote quite a bit of good chamber music for the flute, and flutists keep it alive in this country on their recitals. The Petite Suite showcases the instrument (switching to piccolo in the last movement), and Jolivet’s writing for the harp and viola is apt. His forms are more direct than Bax’s or Takemitsu’s; placing this work after the fleeting music of Bax and Takemitsu gave the program a nice feeling of arrival.

Local concertgoers have no doubt encountered McGill, Chen, and Smith before on San Diego stages. All three are reliably technically sound and musically sensitive, and they did not disappoint in those respects Monday evening. What made this concert so special was that these musicians have never sounded better than in the marvelous acoustics of Conrad Prebys Hall. To hear Smith’s harp there is wondrous, her tones ringing luminously, her plucked notes sharp without losing their bite, and yet encased in—well, an aural glow. You have not properly heard a harp in San Diego until you experience it in this space. McGill’s flute sounds warmer than you’ll hear it in Symphony Hall or on his Art of Elan series at the museum. Brian Chen’s viola is rich, with a lustrous tone in the low strings one rarely encounters in other spaces.

Great musicians, great hall. One hopes they can locate better original works for their ensemble, and leave the arrangements behind next time.

For a copy of the program, click here.

Listen to Bax’s Elegiac Trio and Takemitsu’s And Then I Knew ‘Twas Wind in a 2009 performance recorded at the San Diego Museum of Art