Program

Four Songs of Alma Mahler and Alban Berg, arranged by Lee Dionne for Piano Trio
1. Die stille Stadt
2. Traumgekrönt
3. Laue Sommernacht
4. Sommertage

Johannes Maria Staud: Für Bálint András Varga: 10 Miniatures for Piano Trio (2010)

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in E-Flat Major, Op. 70 No. 2

PERFORMERS

Piano: Lee Dionne
Violin: Anna da Silva Chen
Cello: Jonathan Bekes

Listening Guide

If you could have dinner with a famous painter, composer, architect, psychologist, or biologist from Vienna in the early 1900s, chances are they knew and were probably in love with Alma Mahler. A prolific socialite and composer of over fifty songs, Alma was too often discouraged from composing by her husband (the same Gustav of composing / conductig fame). Alma's seventeen surviving songs showcase an exquisite lyricism similar to her husband's, along with a deft dramatic sense of the miniature form.

Paired here with two early songs of Alban Berg, the four songs serve as a prelude to Johannes Maria Staud's "10 Miniatures." Staud's crystalline gems conjure haunted echoes of Schumann or Schubert, as if heard from another room. Alternately eerie, folk-like, and oddly mesmerising, the miniatures keep us on our toes with sudden outbursts of wildness and violence. In a taut fifteen minutes we experience an universe through intense listening.

We end in sunlight with Beethoven's Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 70 No. 2. Surely Beethoven had the 'Emperor' Concerto top of mind when composing this work. Both the Concerto and the Trio, like the 'Eroica' Symphony, are in the same glorious key of E-flat Major. In this particular Trio, though, it's the cello that often gets the most soloistic role, raising the stakes for the other instruments and leading to a particularly memorable finale.