Felici Piano Trio to perform in Bishop, Mammoth
Chamber Music Unbound rescheduled for March 30 and 31
The Felici Piano Trio will be performing their fourth program of the winter season, “On the Road,” in both Mammoth Lakes and Bishop next weekend. The first concert will be at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 30, at Cerro Coso College, 101 College Parkway in Mammoth Lakes. The second concert will be at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 31, at Cerro Coso College, 4090 W. Line Street in Bishop.
Featured are works by Joseph Haydn, Rebecca Clarke and Johannes Brahms which were the fruits of their creators’ itinerant life-styles. Visit Chambermusicunbound.org for tickets and more information.
The Music: Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio in E major
The Austrian composer Joseph Haydn spent most of his life as musician-in-residence for the Princes of Esterhaza, at their vast estate in the remoteness of the Hungarian countryside. But in the year 1791, and again in 1794, Haydn traveled to England and spent months at a time in London, leading a series of highly successful concerts of his own compositions.
His Piano Trio in E major was composed during his second stay and is dedicated to the eminent German pianist Therese Jansen Bartolozzi, whom Haydn met in London. It is a virtuosic work of wide expressive range in which Haydn explores novel instrumental colors. It is also a harmoniously adventurous composition that reaches into remote key areas, making it both great fun to play, and to listen to. Travel in Haydn’s time meant sitting in a bumpy horse carriage, and to contemplate the endless hours spent “On the Road” is to enter the mindset of a slower age that produced some of the finest that chamber music has to offer!
Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio in C Major
The German composer Johannes Brahms had settled in the city of Vienna, but frequently spent his summers in the Austrian Alps, and in 1880 he arrived in Bad Ischl - with a grand piano in tow! The instrument, easily weighing in at around 800 lbs, was transported to Ischl on narrow mountain roads, still by horse carriage, and had to be schlepped up and down staircases by some very strong human bodies… But it was all worth it, as the summer of 1880 would yield one of the most beautiful works in Brahms’s entire chamber music output, the Trio in C Major, opus 87.
Deeply inspired by the magnificent natural beauty, the clear lakes and towering peaks, Brahms spent his daytime hours “loafing about”, regardless of weather. In the evenings, he would sit down at the piano and work out his musical thoughts, shaping his ideas and impressions into four distinct movements that range from the serious to the silly, from the heartfelt to the magical, along the way evoking Hungarian folk music as well as forest fairies and horn-touting hunting parties.
Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio
In 1918, the viola virtuoso Rebecca Clarke, an Englishwoman of German-american descent, was on world tour in Honolulu, when she heard of a composition competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the munificent American patroness of modern chamber music. Clarke entered a viola sonata and tied for first prize, amidst 70 international entries! Overnight, she had made herself a name as a serious composer, at a time when women composers were still exceedingly rare.
Her Piano Trio performed this weekend was composed just two years later and is considered Rebecca Clarke’s masterpiece. With the onset of WWII she was forced to settle in New York, where she reconnected with an old college friend and got married for the first time at the age of 58. During her 93 years of life, Rebecca Clarke made the contemplative five-day Atlantic boat crossing between London and New York innumerable times, practicing and composing “en route”.
The Musicians
The Felici Piano Trio has performed well over 500 acclaimed concerts in Europe, South America and the United States. The ensemble has distinguished itself as a unique presence on the national music scene since coming to Mammoth Lakes as grantee of Chamber Music America’s Rural Residencies Program and as a California Arts Council Touring Roster Ensemble. Through Chamber Music Unbound, a nonprofit arts organization based in the Eastern Sierra, Felici presents a full winter concert season (Felici & Friends), as well as an international summer festival (Unbound Chamber Music Festival). The ensemble members direct a year-round community music school serving local students in weekly group and individual lessons and perform “Kids Concerts” for elementary, middle and high schools. In addition, they teach music appreciation classes and chamber orchestra in collaboration with Cerro Coso College.
Snow, storm or shine, please join the Felici Piano Trio in person OR tune in to the Saturday livestream at www.twitch.tv/themammothchannel, if you don’t want to get stuck “On the Road.”
The Felici Piano Trio, from left to right: Rebecca Hang on Vanhauwaert on the piano, and Brian Schuldt on the cello. the violin,
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