Joolaee Trio

BRUSH STROKES from Athenia Trio features works for flute, oboe, and bassoon. The program harnesses the impressive versatility of the trio, with six pieces by six different composers, including two commissioned specially for the ensemble: Alyssa Morris’s Brush Strokes, and Robbie McCarthy's The Blind Men and the Elephant.

Constantly shifting from the most impulsive exuberance to the most restrained meditation, from the most intense passion to the most innocent tenderness, this programme forms a representative panorama of Schumann’s chamber music. Going beyond the piano trios, which already give us a fully rounded account of Schumann, Trio Wanderer have invited their favourite partners to join them for their interpretation of two supreme masterpieces - the Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet.

Schumann’s Album für die Jugend, Op. 68, of 1848 appears to be a collection of simple teaching pieces for children. But its unassuming exterior hides a wealth of inter-connected references: to Bach and to William Blake (whose Songs of Innocence and Experience it shadows), and to the life of the Romantic artist as reflected in nature and the passage of the seasons. Anssi Karttunen’s transcription for string trio brings a textural subtlety that enhances the unsuspected layers of meaning in Schumann’s modest miniatures – revealed, over 170 years after their composition, as an essential Romantic manifesto. The Zebra Trio consists of the Austrian violinist Ernst Kovacic, Canadian violist Steven Dann and Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen, each bringing a vast experience in chamber music, in different styles and in working with living composers to the world of the string trio. The Zebra Trio has always mixed familiar master-pieces with new works and transcriptions, combining all of these in creative ways in their concerts.

If you’ve not previously heard of the Sitkovetsky Trio, it’s because this is the ensemble’s recording debut. Formed in 2007 by three young musicians who met at Menuhin School in England, the group won first prize at the International Commerzbank Chamber Music Award just one year later, and then the NORDMETALL Chamber Music Award at the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival one year after that in 2009.