NZTrio celebrates its 20th Anniversary with a series of concerts looking back and looking forward.
NZTrio - Somi Kim, Ashley Brown, Amalia Hall Photo: Jen Raoult
in 2022 the trio celebrates its 20th Anniversary and the Legacy series is an opportunity to look to the past and to the future.
One of NZTrio’s greatest legacies from its first 20 years is the commissioning of over 75 new works. In this series they’ll continue that tradition with a brand new commission in each of the three concerts.
Their first ever commission was from Wellington composer Michael Norris and they return to him for their new work in this first concert of the series.
Robert SCHUMANN arr Kirchner: Six Studies in Canonic Form Op 56, Nos 1 & 2
In 1845 Robert and his wife Clara were deep into studying fugue. You start with Bach of course and much of Bach is written for the organ. In those days, if you couldn't install an organ at home, you could get a pedal piano - a piano with an extra row of foot pedals to play the bass notes. So that's what they did.
Schumann wrote a set of six pieces exploring counterpoint for this instrument.
Their friend Theodor Kirchner later arranged the pieces for piano trio.
Michael NORRIS: Horizon Fields
Michael Norris writes:
"Horizon Fields takes its themes from the large-scale art installation Horizon Field Hamburg by Antony Gormley.
Comprising an enormous steel platform suspended 7m above the ground of the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, its mirror-like black epoxy surface created striking reflections of both the hall’s architecture and the city beyond. For visitors who walked across it, this provided the illusion of teetering on the surface of a deep, dark (perhaps frozen?) lake. Furthermore, any sudden or coordinated movements from the participants would also initiate a gentle rocking motion in the entire structure.
"Gormley’s themes of floating planes suspended in architectural space, mirror-form reflections and gentle oscillations have been freely interpreted to form the core sonic ideas and musical behaviours of this piano trio. The piano is the initiator of movement in the structure, sending out small ‘ripples’ of colour that the strings sustain, echo, vibrate and pulse. A static C-sharp returns throughout the work as a pedal—a flat plane or ‘artificial horizon’, if you will—around which the techniques of echo, reflection/inversion, interference and repetition form an ever-intensifying musical expressivity."
Nikolai KAPUSTIN: Trio (1998)
Nikolai Kapustin died in 2020 and he’s slowly becoming more well-known ... especially among pianists. He was a great pianist himself and was strongly influenced by jazz from an early age. He never considered himself a jazz pianist however, because he never really developed the improvisation skills, he said.
Almost all of his works are based around the piano. Only later in life did he start writing chamber music. This 1998 trio was originally for flute, cello and piano.
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Piano Trio No 7 in Bb Op 97, Archduke
Each of the three Legacy Series concerts ends with a masterpiece of the piano trio repertoire. And you don't get any grander than the Archduke trio.
The archduke in question is Rudolph, Archduke of Austria to whom this trio is dedicated.
Although Beethoven was largely reliant on the support of the aristocracy, he was not particularly well disposed to the institution of the nobility – preferring to adhere to the newly fashionable notion that all men are equals. (Whether he included women in that view is not quite so clear).
However, his friendship with Rudolph was sincere and his admiration for him must have been very high, judging by the works that he dedicated to him: as well as this trio, the Hammerklavier Piano Sonata, the Emperor Concerto and the Missa Solemnis, works of immense stature all of them. The archduke was obviously much more to Beethoven than just a financial supporter.
It’s no doubt dangerous and one shouldn't ... but it is extremely tempting to even view this work as a depiction of Rudolph’s character. The second and fourth movements are good-humoured – playful even. The first and third one could only describe as noble in the sense relating to moral character: elevated, dignifed but with great depth of sensitivity.
Theodor KIRCHNER: Zwiegesang, from Bunte Blätter Op 83
As an encore, the trio plays a short character piece by the man who arranged the Schumann Canonic Studies at the beginning of the programme.
Recorded by RNZ Concert
Producer: Tim Dodd
Engineer: Adrian Hollay
