Wit and passion abounded on Friday night at Annie Wright Grand Hall, as members of the Finisterra Trio and associates combined for a chamber music evening of Fauré, Martinů and Dvořák. The program, part of the Second City Chamber Series, explored musical connections between 20th-century Paris and Prague, and featured some excellent playing.

Fauré was first up. The evening was made all the more interesting (for the performers) by the last-minute substitution of Seattle violinist Simon James for the trio’s usual Kwan Bin Park. It’s quite a job to fit in suddenly not only with a new program but with a group that’s been together for six years, and James did an admirable job. Balancing perfectly Fauré’s syncopated, interweaving lines, the trio moved through the uneasy murmuring of the first movement with grace and complete togetherness. In the second movement, pianist Tanya Stambuk’s sure tone and variety of touch were pleasing, though there could have been more from cellist Kevin Krentz. The third movement was not quite spiky enough, though the final sweeping runs rushed fountain-like from the piano showed how perhaps the trio plays with all members present.

Martinů was next: the relentlessly witty “La Revue de Cuisine” (“The Kitchen Review.”) SCCS director Svend Ronning took up a narration of text adapted from the original ballet, and—garbed in chef’s clothes and with a snobbishly deadpan delivery—took the audience through the comic plot of romance between kitchen utensils. Ronning’s quasi-French accents were hilarious (“Ahh ma cherie, ze steam on your bott-erm is exciting me more and more,” says Pot to Lid), with his prurient-English Broom and Chicago-mobster Dishcloth equally funny. After each narration, the music took the jokes and ran with them: the three-legged, vaguely baroque march of the Prologue; the Tango with sultry C-string cello solo and suggestive trumpet; a manic Charleston that only just held together but followed Pot and Twirling Stick into their illicit nightclubbing; and an emphatically-offbeat Finale, the ensemble bringing out Martinů’s quirky humor in style.

And after intermission, Dvořák’s “Dumky” Trio. It’s a well-known, beloved piece, and all the harder to play with a suddenly-different violinist. All three musicians did a terrific job, swirling through the piece’s sudden emotional changes with passion. The second movement opened with a spine-tingling atmosphere, hushed and resonant; the third’s theme was exquisitely heartbreaking in piano and cello; the violin sparkling and virtuosic in the fourth; and the sound big and deep for the powerful finale.

It’s always such a pleasure to listen to good performers who know exactly where they’re going and have such a good time getting there.

The next Second City Chamber Series concert features the Icicle Creek Piano Trio playing Spanish music on April 19. 253-572-TUNE, www.scchamberseries.org.

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568