Concert #2 - Saturday, November 22, 2008, 8:00 pm
Lucas Theatre, Savannah, Georgia

The Savannah Concert Association presents

The Claremont Trio
Emily Bruskin, violin
Julia Bruskin, cello
Donna Kwong, piano

Widely regarded as the premier piano trio of its generation, the Claremont
Trio is sought after for its thrillingly virtuosic and richly communicative performances. First winners of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award and the only piano trio ever to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, the Claremonts are consistently lauded for their “aesthetic maturity, interpretive depth, and exuberance” (Palm Beach Daily News). To celebrate their 10th anniversary season, the trio returns to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, and appears in more than 60 halls throughout the country.

Equally passionate about the standard repertoire and the music of our time, the Claremonts launch the 2008-2009 season with the release of two CDs, spanning music from Beethoven to Mason Bates. American Trios on Tria Records will be the first disc to present both of Leon Kirchner’s piano trios and will honor his 90th birthday this year. The disc also features Paul Schoenfield’s Café Music, Ellen Zwilich’s Trio and Mason Bates’ String Band (written for the Claremont Trio in 2002). The group’s second 2008 CD, to be released by Ongaku Records, is a collaborative project with clarinetist Jonathan Cohler including works by Beethoven, Brahms and Dohnanyi.

The Trio maintains a strong New York presence this season, performing at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall and Miller Theatre. Their extensive countrywide tour encompasses major venues in Boston, Washington D.C., Seattle, Phoenix, Anchorage, Columbus and Puerto Rico as well as universities including Duke, Kansas State and SUNY Purchase. Deeply committed to expanding the trio repertoire, the Trio will present the world premier performance of a work by Nico Muhly at the Kennedy Center, and will also premier a new piece written for them by Howard Frazin. They will perform Mason Bates’ new work, Red River (2007) for piano trio, clarinet and electronics and perform in special concerts celebrating Leon Kirchner’s 90th and Elliott Carter’s 100th birthdays.

Believing that education on all levels is essential to the future of classical music, the Claremont Trio is extensively involved in teaching the next generation of musicians and music lovers. Sought after for their effectiveness in the classroom as well as on the concert stage, the Trio will conduct educational outreach activities and master classes in more than ten states this season, including a mini-residency at the Peabody Conservatory’s Preparatory Division and master classes at the University of Washington.

The Claremont Trio frequently performs the Beethoven Triple Concerto with orchestras such as the Utah, Virginia and Pacific Symphonies. They collaborated with Peter Martins, director of the NYC Ballet, on a ballet based on Paul Schoenfiled’s Café Music. The Trio has commissioned new works for piano trio by Daniel Kellogg, Mason Bates and Hillary Zipper, and this year they will embark on a project with the innovative composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain.

The Claremont Trio’s debut CD of Mendelssohn trios was released in 2004 to overwhelming critical acclaim. Gramophone magazine praised the disc for giving “large-scale performances with a sweeping, romantic sense of space and strong dramatic contrasts,” while Strings celebrated the Trio’s ability to “find a cool equilibrium between industry and frivolity where an elegant, totally Mendelssohnian sexiness resides.” The group’s second disc of Shostakovich and Arensky trios was released in 2006 in honor of the 100th anniversary of Shostakovich’s birth.

The Trio has been featured on both Japanese and American television and is also heard frequently in interviews on radio stations throughout the US and abroad. In 2006, they added a new feature to their web site - a blog describing their adventures on the road. Through this online tour diary the members of the trio reach out to friends and music lovers of all ages around the world, offering a window into their lives as traveling musicians.

Twin sisters Emily (violin) and Julia Bruskin (cello) formed the Trio with Donna Kwong (piano) in 1999 at The Juilliard School. The Claremonts are based in New York City near their namesake, Claremont Avenue. For more information about the Claremont Trio and to read their blog, visit www.claremonttrio.com

PROGRAM

Piano Trio in G Major, Hob. XV:25 — Haydn
    Andante
    Poco adagio
    Presto (Rondo all ‘Ongarese)

Café Music (1986) — Paul Schoenfield
    Allegro con fuoco
    Andante moderato
    Presto

— INTERMISSION —

Piano Trio in F minor, Op. 65 — Dvorak
    Allegro ma non troppo
    Allegro grazioso - meno mosso
    Poco adagio
    Finale: Allegro con brio

PROGRAM NOTES

Franz Joseph Haydn
Piano Trio in G Major, Hob. XV:25
During his two visits to London between 1791-1795, Haydn composed a series of brilliant piano trios. The London trios, written for the fortepiano rather than the harpsichord, reveal a richer harmonic vocabulary, form and instrumentation. The variety of musical life in England and the fine large English orchstras must surely have contributed to this burst of inspiration. Written between May and August of 1795, the Trio in G Major, HXV:25 was dedicated to Rebecca Schroeter. She was a young widow in London who copied Haydn’s music for him, and whose letters to Haydn express an affection which the older composer returned. The most popular of all Haydn trios, the G Major trio is also one of the more unusual of the London trios in that none of its movements are written in Sonata-Allegro form.

The first movement is an Andante with four variations. The first and third variations are set in keys of G and E minor, while the second and fourth variations are in the tonic major. Haydn contributes his richest melodic utterance to the Poco Adagio movement. Here, the main theme is repeated with a different scoring each time until its climax in the reprise. The finale is a Rondo with variations “in a Gypsies’ style”. The opening theme is reiterated twice with a different scoring each time. This movement was probably meant for a special type of Viennese fortepiano by Schneider from about 1782, which has a percussion stop- a drum attached underneath to give it a gypsy flavor. The late trios of Haydn represent an important development for the genre. By 1797, when the last of Haydn’s piano trios was published, Beethoven had already published his Opus 1 piano trios, and went on to set the genre on course for important new developments.

Paul Schoenfield
Café Music (9186)
The idea to compose Café Music first came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist at Murray’s Restaurant in Minneapolis. Murray’s employs a house trio which plays entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music—music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall. The work draws on many of the types of music played by the trio at Murray’s. For example, early 20th century American, Viennese, light classical, gypsy and Broadway styles are all represented. A paraphrase of the beautiful Chassidic melody is incorporated in the second movement. Café Music was commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) and received its premier during a SPCO chamber concert in January, 1987. – Paul Schoenfield

Antonin Dvorak
Piano Trio No. 3 in F minor, Op. 65
This work is generally and rightly viewed as one of Dvorak’s strongest compositions. It is symphonic in scope and in its breadth of ideas, and much of what Dvorak achieved in the process of composing it readied him for his next big project, the great Symphony in D minor, Op. 70. Dvorak worked on these two masterpieces from 1883 to 1885, and the trio was a work in which he paid particular attention to form. The original sketches were copiously revised before he felt the work ready for publication. The dark quality of the trio is often attributed to Dvorak’s grief at the recent death of his mother. It is evident in the hauntingly beautiful opening of the first movement that we are beginning a work of deep seriousness and intensity. A pianissimo melody in the violin and cello is joined by a rising piano figure that erupts into a fortissimo motif. These contrasting ideas form the basis of much that follows. The driven character of the movement is broken by an expressive cello melody. The folk-like Allegrettograzioso of the second movement is rhythmically inventive. Staccato triplets in the strings are pitted against resolute duples in the piano theme, and the trio section underlines an expressive theme with constant syncopation. Movement three, Poco adagio, begins with a cello theme that interacts intimately with the violin when it enters with the same theme. The movement builds from its opening pensive mood to a fiery middle section in which the strings relate canonically, before the piano leads us back to a calmer close. The finale makes much use of the furiant dance rhythm alternating pulses of 2/4 and 3/4. The rhythmic character of the movement never lets up, even in the quieter and more expressive variants of the theme.

The cumulative effect of the trio is that of an epic. Dvorak struggled to reign in expansiveness with structural integrity. It had not been so long ago that Brahms and the critic Hanslick had first been impressed with this composer’s early pieces, setting him on the path to be a professional composer. The interim years had been filled with hard work. Dvorak’s talent had been evident in earlier works, but the compositional success of this trio marks the triumph of will so necessary to the creation of masterpieces.

Tickets $35, $25, $12.50
Visit SCAD Box Office
www.scadboxoffice.com
216 E. Broughton Street, Savannah, or call
(912) 525-5050. Visa and Mastercard accepted.

Music teachers and students may order special tickets @$2 by emailing name & address to dianelboyd@comcast.net

For a free brochure of the 2008-2009 season, email name & address to eoliver524@comcast.net

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