By Signe Hammer
San Miguel audiences are in for a thrilling experience when the Merz Trio plays for us on Thursday and Friday, February 3 and 4, at 5pm in St. Paul’s Church. Seating will be socially distanced at a maximum of 50% capacity, and standard Covid hygiene protocols will be in place.
Called “incredibly gifted, innovative, and charming,” by Australian music review CutCommon, the award-winning Merz Trio is known for its passionate, original playing and uniquely artistic programming style—often interspersing classic trio works with spoken words and its own arrangements—and wide-ranging interdisciplinary collaborations, including one with chef David Bouley. The Trio – violinist Brigid Coleridge, pianist Lee Dionne and cellist Julia Yang—named their group for “the term coined by German artist and polymath Kurt Schwitters, who … insisted that art only occurred in shared spaces. So Merz refers to connection, to sharing, to possibility.”
The Merz took top prizes at the 2021 Naumburg, 2019 Concert Artists Guild, 2019 Fischoff, and 2018 Chesapeake Competitions. “They bring distinctiveness and subtlety of interpretation … and they show developed and distinctive taste,’ writes Elizabeth Lyon in the Hudson Review. In addition to San Miguel, they have debut performances scheduled at NYC’s Merkin Hall, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
On Thursday, February 3 at 5pm, the program starts with Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 44 in E Major, dedicated to eminent London pianist Mrs. Therese Bartolozzi, and known for its virtuosity and wide expressive range. This is followed by Gabriel Fauré’s only Piano Trio, in D Minor, is a masterwork; written when he was 78 and deaf, it is full of graceful lyricism and melody.
The second half features Brahms’s first – also very late – chamber composition, Piano Trio
No. 1 in B Major. He published it when he was 21 and, 35 years later, near the end of his career, considerably revised it—although, he said, “I didn’t provide it with a new wig, just combed and arranged its hair a little.» The program also includes “evocación,” written for the Merz Trio by Felipe Nieto-Sáchica, and Three Songs of Alma Mahler (2) and Alban Berg (1).
The Friday, February 4, 5pm program begins with Ravel’s Piano Trio in A Minor. Composed as Europe descended into WWl, it provides a magical escape into a world of shimmering colors, exoticism, fleeting shadows, and an underlying sense of quiet lament. The BBC Music Magazine called the Merz’s performance “Entrancing.”
Tchaikovsky’s epic Piano Trio in A Minor follows intermission. Dedicated to the memory of Tchaikovsky’s friend and teacher Nicholas Rubinstein, virtuoso pianist and founder of the Moscow Conservatory, this one-of-a-kind work is full of rich textures, wonderful melodies and radiant emotionality. Richard Strauss’s «Morgen!» («Tomorrow!») rounds out the program.
Concert
Pro Musica Concert Series presents:
Merz Piano Trio
Thu-Fri, Feb 3-4, 5pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
Tickets 200, 400, and 600 pesos
