Rachmaninoff's Trio élégiaque in D minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 9
Wed, Nov 1, 2023, 6:30 pm
Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio at CMS
1 hour, no intermission
Like Brahms’s Piano Trio Op. 8, the Trio élégiaque is the work of a 20-year old master who had already developed a personal, recognizable sound world. The piano is the center of gravity in the trio, and it demands a virtuoso technique (and large hands). Of course, Rachmaninoff played the piano in the premiere of this impassioned tribute to the memory of Tchaikovsky.
This Inside Chamber Music lecture features a work from Rachmaninoff: The Composer on October 29, 2023.
Each lecture is supported by live performance excerpts from the featured work.
Program
Sergei Rachmaninoff
(1873–1943)Trio élégiaque in D minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 9
(1893, rev. 1907, 1917)
Bruce Adolphe
Gilles Vonsattel
Benjamin Beilman
Mihai Marica
Resident lecturer and director of family concerts for CMS since 1992, Bruce Adolphe is a composer of international renown, much of whose output addresses science, history, and the struggle for human rights.
His works are frequently performed by major artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Fabio Luisi, Joshua Bell, Daniel Hope, Angel Blue, the Brentano String Quartet, the Washington National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the Human Rights Orchestra of Europe, and over 60 orchestras worldwide.
Among his most performed works are the violin concerto I Will Not Remain Silent, the violin/piano duo Einstein’s Light, and Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto. Also an author and innovative educator, Bruce Adolphe has spent decades helping people to hear and enjoy music in extraordinary ways. He is the author of several books, including The Mind’s Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination for Performers, Listeners and Composers (3rd ed., 2021) and the chapter on composing in Secrets of Creativity: What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal (2019).
Widely known for his weekly Piano Puzzler segment on American Public Media’s Performance Today, which has been broadcast since 2002, Mr. Adolphe is also the artistic director of the Off the Hook Arts Festival in Colorado, for which he brings scientists, visual artists, filmmakers, writers, and musicians together.
He has been a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, visiting lecturer in the residential colleges at Yale, composer-in-residence and visiting scholar at the Brain and Creativity Institute in Los Angeles, distinguished composer-in-residence at the Mannes College of Music, and on faculty at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Juilliard School.
Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is celebrated for his versatility and originality. He has been honored with an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 2016 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and top prizes in the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, and has performed alongside world-renowned orchestras like the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, San Francisco Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg. He has performed recitals and chamber music at venues including Ravinia, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Lucerne Festival, Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Music@Menlo. An advocate of contemporary music, he has premiered compositions in the United States and Europe, collaborating closely with composers Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, Anthony Cheung, and George Benjamin. Recent milestones in his career encompass a performance of Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with The Orchestra Now, a debut at Mostly Mozart, and a critically acclaimed recording of Richard Strauss and Kurt Leimer’s music with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and Mario Venzago for Schweizer Fonogramm. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and a master’s degree from the Juilliard School. Vonsattel is Professor of Piano at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is on the faculty at Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Violinist Benjamin Beilman has won praise both for his passionate performances and deep, rich tone which the Washington Post called “mightily impressive,” and the New York Times described as “muscular with a glint of violence.” Highlights of recent seasons include debuts with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, return engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and his return to the London Chamber Orchestra to play-direct. He has also performed with the Chicago Symphony, Antwerp Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Zurich Tonhalle, Sydney Symphony, Houston Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and Minnesota Orchestra. In recital and chamber music, he performs regularly at major halls across the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Kölner Philharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Louvre (Paris), and Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo). In 2018 he premiered a new work dedicated to the political activist Angela Davis written by Frederic Rzewski and commissioned by Music Accord. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Beilman studied with Almita and Roland Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago, Ida Kavafian and Pamela Frank at the Curtis Institute, and Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy, and has received many prestigious accolades including a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a London Music Masters Award. He has an exclusive recording contract with Warner Classics and released his first disc Spectrum for the label in 2016. He plays the “Engleman” Stradivarius from 1709 generously on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.
Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a first-prize winner of the Dr. Luis Sigall International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile, as well as the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He has also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer. He is a founding member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet. A recent collaboration with dancer Lil Buck brought forth new pieces for solo cello written by Yevgeniy Sharlat and Patrick Castillo. He recently joined the acclaimed Apollo Trio. Marica studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded master's and artist diploma degrees. He is an alum of CMS's Bowers Program.