NZTrio - Somi Kim, Ashley Brown, Amalia Hall Photo: Jen Raoult
NZTrio in their 20th anniversary year 2022 are celebrating with a series of concerts called Legacy.
And what a legacy they have to celebrate. Formed in 2002 by Ashley Brown, Justine Cormack and Sarah Watkins, the trio now consists of Ashley with Amalia Hall and Somi Kim. They estimate that over 20 years they have given close to 800 performances.
And one of their greatest legacies is the commissioning of over 75 new works. They continue that with three new commissions for this series. And in this concert they play the world premiere of a work by Wellington composer Tabea Squire.
The series title also applies to the legacy of the great works for piano trio left by great composers. In each of these concerts, the trio plays a supreme masterpiece.
SCHUMANN: Six Studies in Canonic Form Op 56, III & IV
All the Legacy concerts start in the same way with some unusual miniatures by Robert Schumann. These are the Studies in Canonic Form, originally written for an instrument that doesn’t really exist any more – the pedal piano – it had an extra row of foot pedals for playing bass notes like an organ. These pieces were arranged for piano trio by Schumann’s friend Theodor Kirchner.
Tabea SQUIRE: Der Tanz
Wellington composer Tabea Squire has a German mother and grew up bi-lingual. Her family has a great affection for the poetry of Christian Morgenstern. His poems are humourous nonsense in the manner of Edward Lear or Ogden Nash, but they also have a metaphysical streak in them.
In Der Tanz, “The Dance”, a four-quarter pig ("Vierviertelschwein") and an up-beat owl ("Auftakteule") meet in the shadow of a pillar and dance to the music of a fiddle bow plant ("Fiedelbogenpflanze"). But it turns out they are just the figments of their creator’s imagination and by the end of the poem they all disappear.
Squire settled on this poem as she was scanning her book of Morgenstern. She writes: “I realised that the four-quarter pig has three legs – like a grand piano – and the up-beat owl has only one – which could be the spike of the cello. With the fiddle-bow plant rounding out the trio of characters, [...] it was too perfect, [...] the poem became the inspiration for the piece."
William BOLCOM: Trio
American composer William Bolcom is well-known for his performances and recordings of ragtime music.
This piano trio – his second – is a relatively recent work from 2014, and as Charlotte Wilson writes in her programme notes, it displays the same gleeful mix of moods and styles as the first ('Spring Trio'), but in a darker, more romantic kind of sound-world.
SCHUBERT: Piano Trio No 2 in Eb D929
Franz Schubert died at the age of 31 in November 1828. He had been seriously ill for several years. And yet in his final year he completed an absolutely staggering number of works: several songs of course including The Shepherd on the Rock and the great song-cycle Schwanengesang, several cantatas, the last set of impromptus for piano and the Drei Klavierstucke, the Ninth Symphony, the String Quintet ... and his two piano trios. The mind boggles.
The two trios complement each other: the first in Bb is sunny and lyrical, and this second one in Eb is darker and more dramatic. He wrote a dedication at the top when he sent it to his publisher: “Dedicated to no one, save those who find pleasure in it.”
SCHUBERT arr NZTrio: Litanei auf dem Fest Allerseelen D343
A song as an encore.
Recorded by RNZ Concert in Auckland Concert Chamber, 20 July 2022
Producer: Tim Dodd
Engineer: Adrian Hollay
