Florestan Trio 03/14/2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
8:00 p.m.
Mahaney Center for the Arts, Concert Hall
Florestan Trio
There are musicians whose performances one wants to hear at every opportunity, just because the playing is so thoughtfully prepared and exquisitely realized. The Florestan Trio (pianist Susan Tomes, violinist Anthony Marwood, cellist Richard Lester) has provided such performances, both live and on their many recordings of the major trio literature. Of their University of Chicago appearance a few years ago, Chicago Tribune music critic John von Rhein wrote, "The music spoke through them with all manner of tonal inflections, a quality that immediately set their readings apart." Their Middlebury program consists of trios by Haydn, Ives, and Brahms (the B Major).
Reserved Seating. Tickets: $15/12/5
Pre-performance dinner: Rehearsals Cafe, 6:30 p.m. Tickets: $15
http://go.middlebury.edu/tickets or 802-443-MIDD (6433).
Program:
HAYDN Trio in D Major, XV:24
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Allegro, ma dolce
IVES Trio (1911)
Moderato
TSIAJ
Moderato con moto
Intermission
BRAHMS Trio in B Major, Op. 8
I. Allegro con brio
II. Scherzo. Allegro molto
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro
For additional program notes, please contact Events and Residency Manager Allison Coyne Carroll at carroll@middlebury.edu
Ensemble Biographies:
‘The Florestan Trio defines great chamber music playing.’ (San Francisco Chronicle). In honouring the Florestan Trio with its award for chamber music in 2000, the Royal Philharmonic Society recognised the achievements of the Trio in a repertoire in which long-standing, dedicated ensembles have always been rare. The Florestan Trio has now pursued this path for a decade, and listeners all over the world express their appreciation of the Trio’s devotion to a field of music which they believe deserves wholehearted commitment.
The Trio’s recordings on Hyperion have received outstanding reviews. All their discs have been nominated for Gramophone Awards, and are recommended choices in major collectors’ guides. Their disc of the first two trios by Schumann won a 1999 Gramophone Award and a host of other accolades. Their CD of French piano trios is one of Hyperion’s best-sellers in the chamber music field, and their two discs of Schubert captured several critics’ votes as the best versions now available. In 2005 they were shortlisted for two awards, BBC Radio Three’s Listeners’ Award, and a Gramophone Award for chamber music. Their latest discs, of trios by Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens, have gathered extraordinary praise in the past few months.
They celebrated their tenth anniversary season with the completion of their Beethoven recording cycle for Hyperion, and with three sold-out performances of the Beethoven Trios in London’s Wigmore Hall. The recordings have been acclaimed: ‘Perhaps the finest contemporary exponents of this repertoire performing on modern instruments today.’ (Sunday Times) ‘Everything about this release is distinguished’ (Fanfare, USA). Their latest disc, of Mendelssohn piano trios, has been rapturously received: ‘The Florestan were born to play these works’ (Times).
The Trio are popular visitors at major European venues such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Brussels Conservatoire, De Singel in Antwerp, and the Vienna Konzerthaus. This season, they will tour in Italy, in Sweden and in Germany. Past tours have taken them to South America, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. They have twice toured the USA to great acclaim, and return for another major tour in October 06. They have had works specially composed for them by Judith Weir, Peteris Vasks, Sally Beamish, John Casken, Rudi Martinus van Dijk and Dmitri Smirnoff.
A focal point of the Trio’s year is its own festival in Peasmarsh, East Sussex. Each June they present four days of concerts centred on the Trio, but also welcoming guest artists of international stature. Perhaps uniquely, they each appear during the festival as concerto soloists with orchestras such as the Academy of St Martins in the Fields. The Trio has founded a charitable company, The Florestan Trust, which aims to develop public awareness and knowledge of music through the presentation of concerts, educational work and commissioning new works.
In May 2006 Anthony Marwood was named Instrumentalist of the Year at the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, the first string player to receive this honour in more than a decade, confirming him as one of the most sought-after and versatile violinists of his generation. He has a growing reputation as soloist/director and in January 2006 became Artistic Director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and of the Shannon International Music Festival. He is a regular collaborator with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (their first CD together winning high praise), and in summer 2005 his passion for theatre resulted in a UK tour with the Academy of a fully staged production of Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, in which he acted the role of the Soldier as well as playing the violin part, "his performance, directed by Lawrence Evans, was picked as one of the cultural highlights of 2005." (the Daily Telegraph)
Since his concerto debut at the BBC Proms in London in 1993 he has inspired some exciting collaborations with the major British Orchestras, as is now in increasing demand internationally. He has had many works written for him, including Sally Beamish's 1995 concerto, subsequently televised for BBC4 and due for release on the BIS label in spring 2007. Thomas Adès's concerto Concentric Paths, which he premiered in September 2005 in Berlin and at the BBC Proms (an event which was nominated for a South Bank Show Award), is the result of a fruitful musical partnership with the composer. Adès and Marwood are currently touring a programme of all of Stravinsky's music for violin and piano. In February 2006 they performed together in Los Angeles, where they also gave the US premiere of Adès's Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, both events winning rave reviews from the LA press. In April 2006 he returned to the US to give three performances of the Kurt Weill concerto with the Detroit Symphony. Other forthcoming engagements include opening the 06-07 Chamber Music Season at the Wigmore Hall in a recital with Thomas Ades, a tour of Germany as soloist/director with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, concertos with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Barbican, the London Philharmonic at the South Bank, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the Aldeburgh Festival and in Paris, the Malaysian Philharmonic, the NDR Hamburg, and a major tour as soloist/director with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Anthony Marwood recordings include Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on BMG, but he also enjoys performing and recording more unusual works. He has made acclaimed recordings on the Hyperion label of sonata repertoire with the pianist Susan Tomes of Dvorak (Classic CD Award), Schumann (Gramophone Award nomination) and concertos by Stanford (Gramophone Award nomination), Coleridge-Taylor and Somervell, and with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, concertos by Kurt Weill and Peteris Vasks, "performed with blistering intensity and astonishing accuracy" (BBC Radio 3 CD Review. )
He recently acquired the use of a beautiful violin by Carlo Bergonzi (1736), kindly bought by a syndicate of purchasers.
Please visit anthonymarwood.com
One of Britain's foremost cellists, Richard Lester has earned distinction as a concerto and recital soloist and as an accomplished chamber musician. He is equally at home in period instrument performance and in 'modern' and is associated with some of the finest performers from both fields. Alongside his activities with the Florestan Trio, he is principal cello with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
He has appeared as soloist with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Roger Norrington, Paavo Berglund, Myung Whun Chung and Sandor Vegh, and has performed frequently as director/soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in some of the world's most prestigious venues. In the UK he has played concertos with, among others, the BBC Scottish SO, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Manchester Camerata, and is frequently called upon to be guest-leader of the cello sections of the major London orchestras.
Richard Lester was a founder member of the celebrated ensemble Domus, with whom he toured worldwide and recorded most of the repertoire for Piano Quartet. His interest in period performance led him to join Hausmusik, a flexible ensemble performing and recording classical and early romantic chamber music on period instruments. He is a frequent guest with the Nash Ensemble, especially in their series at the Wigmore Hall, and has been invited to take part in many chamber-music festivals around the world, most recently in the USA, Canada, Japan, Italy and Sweden.
Recent highlights include a televised performance of Schubert's Trout Quintet with pianist Andras Schiff as part of the Wigmore Hall's centenary celebrations, and a new, much acclaimed CD release of Boccherini Quintets with the Vanbrugh Quartet.
His recording with Susan Tomes of the complete music for cello and piano by Mendelssohn and a disc of Boccherini sonatas on period instruments, both available on the Hyperion label, have received enthusiastic critical acclaim.
Susan Tomes is recognised as one of the finest pianists and chamber musicians of her generation. She was the first woman to read music at King's College, Cambridge, which had been an exclusively male college for 400 years. She went on to be a founder member of the award-winning group Domus which travelled the world with its own portable concert hall, a geodesic dome. When Domus disbanded in 1995, she joined forces with Anthony Marwood and Richard Lester to form the Florestan Trio, which has enjoyed extraordinary critical success, winning the 1999 Gramophone Award for chamber music, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award 2000, the first time this has been given to a piano trio.
Her discography includes over forty CDs of solo, duo and chamber music. Many of these have won international awards including three Gramophone Awards, the 1999 Classic CD Award, several Diapasons d'Or in France, and several Deutsche Schallplattenpreise. Her Virgin Classics disc of Billy Mayerl's piano music has been played on radio stations all over the world. She also performs and records with the Gaudier Ensemble, an internationally-based group of string and wind players who are all principals of European symphony orchestras. In January 04 their Hyperion recording of three Mozart piano concertos K413-5 was acclaimed: "Susan Tomes's playing has all the qualities for which Mozart himself was renowned: delicacy, agility, neatness, expressive eloquence." (Telegraph).
In recent years, her parallel career as a writer has placed her in the forefront of commentators on performance issues. In April 2004 she published her first book, Beyond the Notes, a collection of diaries and essays about performance. It was Tuesday's Book in The Independent, Book of the Month in Classic FM, Classical Music and Gramophone magazines, featured in The Guardian and in The Scotsman, and has had extracts serialised on RTE Irish Radio. Her second book, A Musician's Alphabet, was published by Faber & Faber in 2006. It was Book of the Month in Classic FM magazine, a Book of the Year in The Herald, a Christmas Choice in The Times, and a Best Biography of 2006 in The Independent. Susan also has her own page on the Guardian's new 'comment' weblog, where you can read her latest contributions.
Artist Website:
http://www.florestantrio.com/
Press Quotes:
"In the few years since their formation, the Florestan Trio have received such consistent praise for their performances and discs that one almost trembles lest the reality prove more mundane. Yet within seconds of the start [of their Wigmore Hall concert], their quality was reaffirmed
every phrase alive with insight and sentiment." --The Independent, 8.1.2003
"Like all successful ensembles, the members of the trio preserve their separate musical identities while still creating a collective persona: Anthony Marwood's nervously charged, energised violin provides the ideal counterweight to Richard Lester's warmer, more relaxed cello, while Susan Tomes' piano adds the colour, and moments of insight and poetry. The sheer ebullience of the playing in the outer movements of the Ghost Trio Op 70/1, for instance, is totally convincing." --The Guardian, Andrew Clements
"The first blast of classical music of the new year - a concert by the Florestan Trio at Wigmore Hall - came as a relief after a month of seasonal ululations designed to wash over you. Here at last was something to listen to, to follow bar by bar, the return of musical argument." --Sunday Times
"Few chamber groups can spread delight more readily than the Florestan Trio."--The Times
"The Florestan Trio is without doubt a first-class ensemble." --Japan Times
"Everything they touch seems to turn to musical gold." --The Strad
