jwilzewske: ensembles

Showing posts with label ensembles. Show all posts

Monday, February 4, 2008

Trio Con Brio: How Big Is the Piano Trio Repertoire, Really?

Like any literature, we tend to hear a small number of pieces played frequently—a variety of motives account for the popularity of a subset of the canon. Ensembles prepare what the ‘market’ wants to hear and what presenters know will please their audiences. Recording companies strongly favor what has sold in the past. And so, having never previously looked myself to see how many trios exist, after the Trio Con Brio performance I asked cellist Soo-Kyung Hong a dumb question: “How big is the repertoire for Piano Trio? I know it is tiny compared to, say, the String Quartet literature. But how small is it?”

Her answer was coy. “It is bigger than people think. But not more than about 100 Piano Trio works.”

My reaction was more shocked than maybe she expected. How could it be so small as just 100? Surely there must be many under-performed or forgotten works that she is leaving out of that number! Soo-Kyung added, “But in recent years everybody’s been very busy commissioning new things. We ourselves have commissioned a few.”

My curiosity was piqued. I spent Sunday searching on the web and came up with this list. Watch it scroll by below if you have time to kill, or you can download it as HTML file here. I come up with more than 400 piano trios. And without doubt I have missed some—I only spent an afternoon compiling this at home after all. I have not plowed through a conservatory’s library, only Google. (It was more interesting than the U.S. football game that was on television. New England defeated ... by their own defense. New York won. )

Aren’t there some of these pieces that merit more frequent performance and recording? Yes! Such a beautiful and accessible idiom! Can we continue the trend and commission yet more of these Piano Trios? Sure!

Karl Abel

Six Trios, Op. 5 (1764)

Lev Abeliovich

Piano Trio (1955)

Jean Absil

Piano Trio, Op. 7 (1931)

Samuel Adler

Piano Trio (1964)

Kathryn Alexander

Piano Trio 'AroundAbout' (2006)

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh

Impromptus (2004)

Charles-Valentin Alkan

Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 30

Jan van Amerongen

Piano Trio (1986)

David Amram

Piano Trio 'Dirge and Variations' (1962)

Iosif Andriasov

Trio, Op. 7

Fikret Amirov

To the Memory of Ghadsibekov (1953)

Volkmar Andreae

Piano Trio (1901)
Piano Trio No. 2 (1914)

Hendrik Andriessen

Piano Trio (1947)

Caroline Ansink

Piano Trio 'Skopos' (1988)

Violet Archer

Piano Trio No. 2 (1956)

Anton Arensky

Piano Trio No. 1 in d minor, Op. 32
Piano Trio No. 2 in f minor, Op. 73

Isabel Aretz

Piano Trio (1965)

Claude Arrieu

Piano Trio (1958)

Valery Arsumanov

Trio, Op. 183

Juan Artero

Piano Trio 'Epilogo a la auscencia' (2007)

Lera Auerbach

Piano Trio, Op. 28 (1992-1996)

Arno Babadzhanyan

Trio in f-sharp minor (1953)

Victor Babin

Piano Trio (1956)

Carl Phillipp Emmanuel Bach

Three Trios Op. 2

Johann Christian Bach

Two Trios

David Baker

Contrasts (1976)
Roots (1976)
Roots II (1992)

Vytautas Barkauskas

Modus vivendi, Op. 108 (1996)

Roland Batik

Four Intermezzi

Dennis Báthory-Kitsz

Piano Trio 'Full House Reset' (2000)

Ludwig van Beethoven

3 Piano Trios, Op. 1
Piano Trio in B-flat, alternate version of the trio for clarinet, violoncello and piano, Op. 11
Piano Trio (arrangement of the second Symphony in D major, Op. 36)
Piano Trio (arrangement of Septet in E-flat major, Op. 20), Op. 38
Allegretto B-Dur WoO.39
Variations for Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 44
Piano Trio (arrangement of string quintet in E-flat major, Op.4), Op. 63
2 Piano Trios (D major ‘Ghost’; E-flat major), Op. 70
Piano Trio in B-flat major ‘Archduke’, Op. 97
Adagio, Variationen and Rondo op.121a (Kakadu Variations)
Variations on Müller’s Song for Piano Trio in G major, Op. 121a
From ‘A Select Collection of 25 Original Irish Airs’ (WwO 152)
From ‘A Select Collection of 20 Original Irish Airs’ (WwO 153)

Peter Benary

Piano Trio (1974)

Arthur Berger

Piano Trio (2000)

Leonard Bernstein

Piano Trio (1937)

Franz Berwald

Four Piano Trios (1851)

Frank Beyer

Piano Trio 'Lichtspuren' (2008)

Evgene Birman

Piano Trio 'Rhapsodie' (2003)

Rainer Bischof

Trio Fragile, Op. 21 (1985)

Martin Bjelik

Piano Trio in B Major (1986)

Boris Blacher

Piano Trio (1973)

Ernest Bloch

Three Nocturnes (1924)
Piano Trio (1925)

Luigi Boccherini

Piano Trio in e minor, Op. 12

Christopher Bochmann

Piano Trio 'Meditation' (1970)

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier

Piano Trio, Op. 50 (1734)

Sergei Bortkiewicz

Trio, Op. 38 (1928)

Hans-Jurgen von Bose

Piano Trio (2002)

Susan Botti

Piano Trio (2008)

Lili Boulanger

Deux pièces en trio (1918)

Martin Boykan

Piano Trio No. 2 (1997)

Johannes Brahms

Piano Trio No. 1 in B major/minor, Op. 8 (1891)
Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87
Piano Trio No. 3 in c minor, Op. 101
Piano Trio No. 4 in A major, op. post. (spurious)

Paul Brantley

Piano Trio 'Thomas Weaver in memoriam' (1982)

Bert Breit

Shibbolet Trio (1996)

Martin Bresnick

Trio (1988)

Frank Bridge

Phantasie Trio (Piano Trio No. 1) 1907
Piano Trio No. 2 (1929)

Benjamin Broening

Piano Trio (1991)

Max Bruch

Piano Trio in c minor, Op.5 (1857)

Paul Bruinen

Piano Trio 'Mano' (1990)

Ignaz Brüll

Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 14

Lou Bunk

Piano Trio (2008)

Steven Burke

Fury of Bloom(2001)

Alan Bush

Piano Trio (1947)

Ferruccio Busoni

Andante with Variations and Scherzo, Op. 18a (K. 184)

Charles Camilleri

Piano Trio (2005)

T. Patrick Carrabre

Piano Trio No. 2 'From the Dark Reaches' (2002)

Alfredo Casella

Siciliana e Burlesca, Op. 23-bis

Gaspar Cassadó

Piano Trio in C Major (1925)

Alexis de Castillon

Trio No.1 in B-flat Major, Op. 4

Aureliano Cattaneo

Piano Trio No. 2 (2007)

Cécile Chaminade

Trio No. 1 in g Minor, Op. 11
Trio No. 2 in a Minor, Op. 34

Sebastian Chang

Piano Trio (2004)

Eric Chasalow

Piano Trio 'Yes, I Really Did' (1998)

Ernest Chausson

Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 3

Frédéric Chopin

Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 8

Rebecca Clarke

Piano Trio (1921)

Rhona Clarke

Piano Trio 'Dunsandle' (1989)

Stephen Cohn

Piano Trio 'Anticipation of Light' (2004)

Aaron Copland

Vitebsk: Study on a Jewish Theme for Piano Trio (1928)
Prelude for piano trio

Frank Corcoran

Piano Trio (2007)

Richard Cornell

Piano Trio 'Triple Helix' (1999)

Allan Crossman

Piano Trio 'Icarus' (2006)

Glenn Crytzer

Piano Trio 'Explorations' (2006)

Carl Czerny

Piano Trio No. 1 in E-flat, Op. 105
Piano Trio No. 2 in A, Op. 166
Piano Trio No. 3 in E, Op. 173
Piano Trio No. 4 in a minor, Op. 289
Trois Sonatines faciles et brillantes, Op. 104
Deux Trios brillans, Op. 211
Six Grand Potpourris for piano trio, Op. 212

Ram Da-Oz

Piano Trio (1963)

Ingolg Dahl

Piano Trio (1962)

Richard Danielpour

Piano Trio 'A Child's Reliquary' (2000)

Jean-Luc Darbellay

Piano Trio 'Empreintes' (1996)

Mario Davidovsky

Piano Trio 'Chaconne' (1972)

Claude Debussy

Piano Trio in g minor, L. 3 (1880)

Lex van Delden

Piano Trio, Op. 95 (1969)
Piano Trio II, Op. 114 (1988)

Edison Denisov

Trio, Op. 39 (1971)

Tamar Diesendruck

Piano Trio (2001)

Albert Dietrich

Second Trio in A Major, Op. 14

Jan van Dijk

Piano Trio (1950)

Ignacy Feliks Dobrzynski

Grand Trio in a minor, Op. 17

Sam Dresden

Piano Trio (1942)

Antonín Dvorák

Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, B. 51
Piano Trio No. 2 in g minor, Op. 26/B.56
Piano Trio No. 3 in f minor, Op. 65/B.130
Piano Trio No. 4 in e minor ("Dumky"), Op. 90/B. 166

John Eaton

Piano Trio (2006)

Horst Ebenhoh

Piano Trio (1973)

Anton Eberl

Piano Trio (formerly Mozart K. 291)

Klaus Egge

Piano Trio (1941)

Søren Nils Eichberg

Piano Trio (2003)

Ty Alan Emerson

Piano Trio (2002)

Sven Einar Englund

Trio (1982)

Kurt Erickson

Five Moments (1996)

Gabriel Erkoreka

Piano Trio 'Aldakiak' (2007)

Ivan Eröd

Trio No. 1, Op. 21 (1976)
Trio No. 2, Op. 42 (1982)

Gareth Farr

Piano Trio 'Ahi' (2006)

Gabriel Fauré

Piano Trio in d minor, Op. 120

Zdenek Fibich

Trio in f minor (1872)

Vivian Fine

Piano Trio (1980)

Michael Finnissy

Piano Trio 'Independence Quadrilles' (1982)

Graham Fitkin

Piano Trio 'Lens' (2006)

Josef Bohuslav Foerster

Trio No. 1 in f minor, Op. 8
Trio No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 38

Arthur Foote

Piano Trio No. 1 in c minor, Op. 5
Piano Trio No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 65

Ron Ford

Piano Trio 'Brandelli' (1989)

LGeza Frid

Piano Trio (1947)

Philip Fried

Piano Trio (1984)

Joel Phillip Friedman

Piano Trio 'Extreme Measures' (1997)

James Friskin

Piano Trio (1908)

Gunnar de Frumerie

Trio No. 2, Op. 45 (1952)

Robert Fuchs

Piano Trio in C major, Op. 22
Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 72

Sandro Fuga

Piano Trio (1941)

Niels Wilhelm Gade

Trio, Op. 42 (1863)

Remaud Gagneux

Piano Trio (1976)

Hans Gál

Variations on an Old Viennese Heurigen Melody, Op. 9

German Galynin

Trio (1947)

Lucija Garuta

Trio in B-flat Major (1948)

Anthony Gatto

Piano Trio 'Bakken' (2001)

Harald Genzmer

Piano Trio in F Major

Fritz Geissler

Piano Trio (1970)

Armando Gentilucci

Piano Trio 'Crescendo' (1971)

Harald Genzmer

Piano Trio (1943)

Roberto Gerhard

Piano Trio (1918)

Friedrich Gernsheim

Piano Trio No. 1 in F Major, Op. 28
Trio No. 2 in B Major, Op. 37

Giorgio Federico Ghedini

Due Intermezzi (1915)

Mikhail Gnessin

Piano Trio (1947)

Benjamin Godard

Piano Trio No. 2 (1884)

Hugo Godron

Piano Trio (1948)

Alexander Goehr

Piano Trio (1966)

Hermann Goetz

Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 1

Carl Goldmark

Trio No.1, B-flat major, Op. 4
Trio No.2, E minor, Op. 33

Rubin Goldmark

Trio in d minor, Op. 1

Jonathan Golove

Bad Dreams (2001)

Gordon Goodwin

Piano Trio 'Swing Through Time' (2001)

Stephen Gorbos

Piano Trio 'Anspielen' (2006)

Mark Gould

Piano Trio No. 2 (2000)

Enrique Granados

Piano Trio, H. 140

Philip Grange

Piano Trio 'Homage to Chagall' (1995)

Alexander Gretchaninov

Piano Trio No. 1 in c minor, Op. 38 (1906)
Piano Trio No. 2 in G major, Op. 128 (1931)

Edvard Grieg

Andante con moto in c minor, BoSE 137 (1878)

Jon Jeffrey Grier

Piano Trio 'rondoids' (2003)

Odd Gruner-Hegge

Piano Trio (1923)

Daron Hagen

Piano Trio No. 1: Trio Concertante (1984)
Piano Trio No. 2: J’entends (1986)
Piano Trio No. 3 : Wayfaring Stranger (2006)
Piano Trio No. 4 : Angel Band (2007)

John Harbison

Piano Trio (2005)

Ross Harris

Piano Trio 'Senryu' (2007)

Roy Harris

Piano Trio (1934)

Tibor Harsanyl

Piano Trio (1926)

Franz Joseph Haydn

Piano Trios, H XV 1-40

Bernard Heiden

Piano Trio (1936)

Stephen Heller

Intermezzo in E Major (1842)

Robert Helps

Piano Trio (2004)

Mikko Heinio

Piano Trio (1988)

Adolf von Henselt

Trio in a minor, Op. 24

Hans Werner Henze

Adagio (1993)
Kammersonate (1990)

Jennifer Higdon

Piano Trio (1990)

Matthew Hindson

Piano Trio (2007)

Cheryl Frances Hoad

Piano Trio 'Melancholia' (2007)

Trevor Hold

Piano Trio (2000)

Samuel Holloway

Piano Trio 'Stapes' (2007)

Joel Hoffman

Piano Trio No. 2 'Lost Traces' (2003)

Joan Huang

Piano Trio 'Remembering South River Land' (2000)

Hans Huber

Eine Bergnovelle (after E. Zahn's "Bergvolk", Trio No. 4, Op. 120)

Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Piano Trio No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 12
Piano Trio No. 2 in F major, Op. 22
Piano Trio No. 3 in G major, Op. 35
Piano Trio No. 4 in G major, Op. 65
Piano Trio No. 5 in E major, Op. 83
Piano Trio No. 6 in E-flat major, Op. 93
Piano Trio No. 7 in E-flat major, Op. 96

Miriam Hyde

Fantasy Trio in b minor, Op. 26 (1933)

Thomas Hyde

Piano Trio 'Three Dancers' (2007)

Lee Hyla

Piano Trio (2005)

Andrew Imbrie

Piano Trio (1946)

Vincent d'Indy

Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 98

Michael Ippolito

Piano Trio 'Double Passacaglia' (2006)

John Ireland

Phantasy-Trio (1906)
Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor (1917)
Piano Trio No. 3 (1938)

Miloslav Istvan

Piano Trio (1958)

Vera Ivanova

Piano Trio 'Fragments' (2002)

Charles Ives

Piano Trio, S. 86 (1911)

Adrián Jack

Piano Trio (1992)

Gordon Jacob

Piano Trio (1959)

Pierre Jalbert

Piano Trio (2002)

Leos Janacek

Piano Trio (1908) [lost]

Tadensz Jarecki

Piano Trio, Op. 11 (1943)

Joseph Jellinek

Piano Trio, Op. 10

Knud Jeppesen

Piano Trio (1957)

Wang Jie

Piano Trio 'Shadow' (2006)

Evan Johnson

Piano Trio 'Via Crucis' (1996)

Thomas Hewitt Jones

Piano Trio 'Cantus and Fugue' (2000)

John Joubert

Landscapes for soprano and piano trio, Op. 129

Paul Juon

Trio No.1 in a minor, Op. 17
Trio-Caprice on Selma Lagerlof’s ‘Gosta Berling’ in b minor, Op. 39 [Trio No.2]
Trio No. 3 in G Major, Op. 60
Litaniae / Tone Poem [Trio No. 4] in c-sharp minor, Op. 70
Legend [Trio No. 5] in d minor, Op. 83
Suite in C Major, Op. 89

Jindrich Kaan z Albestu

Trio No. 2 in g minor, Op. 29

Pal Kadosa

Piano Trio (1956)

Mauricio Kagel

Trio No.1 in three movements (1984)
Trio No. 2 in one movement (2001)

Armin Kaufmann

Piano Trio (1958)

Christopher Kaufman

Piano Trio 'Madrigal for Spring' (1997)

Hugo Kaun

Trio No. 1 in B-flat, Op. 32 (1896)
Trio No. 2 in c minor, Op. 58 (1904)

Donald Keats

Piano Trio 'Revisitations' (1992)

Daniel Kellogg

Piano Trio 'Ora Perpetuo' (2003)

Rudolf Kelterborn

Piano Trio 'Fantasia' (1967)

Martin Kennedy

Piano Trio 'Stanislas' (1996)

Harrison Kerr

Piano Trio (1938)

Otto Ketting

Piano Trio (1988)

John King

Piano Trio No. 1 (1977)

Leon Kirchner

Trio (1954)
Trio No. 2 (1993)

Theodor Kirchner

Novelletten, Op. 59

Victor Kissine

Piano Trio (1994)

Giselher Klebe

Piano Trio, Op. 22 (1955)

Richard Klein

Piano Trio 'Fantasia' (1974)

Peter Knell

Piano Trio No. 1 (1999)

Sven-Ingo Koch

Piano Trio (2006)

Joonas Kokkonen

Piano Trio (1989)

Aviya Kopelman

Piano Trio (2003)

Nikolai Korndorf

Piano Trio (1991)

Erich Korngold

Piano Trio (1909)

Olli Kortekangas

Piano Trio 'Charms' (1998)

Hans Kox

Piano Trio (1976)

Leopold Kozeluch

Piano Trio, Op. 12

Jonathan Kramer

Piano Trio 'Surreality Check' (1998)

Bjørn Kruse

Locus Scherzo for Piano Trio (2000)

Rafael Kubelik

Trio concertante (1988)

Toivo Kuula

Piano Trio (1979)

Osvald Lacerda

Piano Trio (1969)

Ezra Laderman

Piano Trio (1959)

Kenneth LaFave

Piano Trio 'American Avenues' (2006)

László Lajtha

Trio concertante, Op. 10 (1928)

Édouard Lalo

Piano Trio No. 1 in c minor, Op. 7
Piano Trio No. 2 in b minor (Ode on Music “Descend, ye Nine?”)
Piano Trio No. 3 in a minor, Op. 26

Noel Lee

Piano Trio (1959)

Rene Leibowitz

Piano Trio (1950)

Thomas Oboe Lee

Piano Trio No. 1 (1994, rev. 2000)

Ernst Ludwig Leitner

Tempus edax rerum (1994)

John Lessard

Piano Trio (1966)

Andrew Lewis

Piano Trio 'Tracking' (1990)

Peter Tod Lewis

Piano Trio (1960)

Lowell Liebermann

Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 32 (1990)
Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 77 (2001)

Franz Liszt

Rhapsodie Hongroise No. 9 - Le Carnaval de Pesth [S. 379]
Orpheus: Symphonic Poem
Piano Trio la Lugubre Gondola (1882)

Henry Charles Litolff

Piano Trio No. 1 in d minor, Op. 47
Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 56
Piano Trio No. 3 in c minor, Op. 100

David Little

Piano Trio (2003)

Heinz Martin Lonquich

Piano Trio II (2005)

Theo Loevendie

Piano Trio 'Ackermusik' (1997)

Pei Lu

Piano Trio 'Ballad of the Great Wall' (2005)

Withold Lutoslawski

Piano Trio (1980)

Gilda Lyons

Piano Trio 'Elements and Offertories' (2006)

Hannes Löschel

Frogs for Piano Trio (2000)

Artur Malawski

Trio in C-sharp (1953)

Gian Francesco Malipiero

Sonata a tre (1927)

Tigran Mansurian

Five Bagatelles (2000)

Frank Martin

Trio sur des mélodies polulaires irlandaises (1925)

Niels Marthinsen

Piano Trio (2001)

Bohuslav Martinu

Piano Trio No. 1 (Cinq pièces brèves), H. 193
Piano Trio No. 2 in d minor, H. 327
Piano Trio No. 3 in C major, H. 332
Bergerettes (5) for piano trio, H. 275

Giuseppe Martucci

Trio No.1 in C Major, Op.59

Charles Mason

Piano Trio 'Three-Legged Race' (2000)

Joseph Mayseder

Trio No. 4 in G Major, Op.59

Eunan McCreesh

Piano Trio 'The Famished Road' (1998)

John McDonald

Piano Trio 'Calpentyn Alternatives' (2004)

Dosia McKay

Danse Macabre (2007)

Paul Mealor

Borderlands (2004)

Ludwig Meinardus

Trio in a minor, Op. 40

Marc Mellits

Piano Trio 'Fruity Pebbles' (2004)

Fanny Mendelssohn

Trio in d minor, Op. 11

Felix Mendelssohn

Piano Trio No. 1 in d minor, Op. 49 (1839)
Piano Trio No. 2 in c minor, Op. 66 (1845)

Krzysztof Meyer

Trio, Op. 50 (1980)

Georges Migot

Piano Trio (1935)

Darius Milhaud

Piano Trio, Op. 428 (1969)

Christina Mitchell

Piano Trio (2001)

Ernest Moeran

Piano Trio in e minor (1942)
Piano Trio in D major (1944)

Douglas Moore

Piano Trio (1953)

Paul Moravec

Piano Trio 'Mood Swings' (1999)

Ennio Morricone

Distanze(1958)

Harold Morris

Piano Trio No. 2 (1937)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, K. 254
Piano Trio No. 2 in G major, K. 496
Piano Trio No. 3 in B-flat major, K. 502
Piano Trio No. 4 in E major, K. 542
Piano Trio No. 5 in C major, K. 548
Piano Trio No. 6 in G major, K. 564
Divertimento B-flat Major, K. 254
Allegro d minor, K. 442/1 (1783?)
Andantino G Major, K. 442/2 (1783?)
Allegro D Major, K. 442/3 (1783?)
Fragment B-flat Major, K. 501a (1786)

Robert Muczynski

First Piano Trio, Op. 24 (1966)
Second Piano Trio, Op. 36 (1975)
Third Piano Trio, Op. 46 (1986)

Herman Mulder

Piano Trio, Op. 137 (1965)

Jeffrey Mumford

Piano Trio 'in the community of encompassing hours' (2007)

John Musto

Piano Trio (2005)

David Myska

Piano Trio 'Scorpion' (1994)

Bongani Ndodana

Piano Trio 'Ceremonies and Tongues' (1998)

Dika Newlin

Piano Trio (1948)

Willem Wander van Nieukerk

Piano Trio (2008)

Marlos Nobre

Piano Trio (1960)

H. H. Nordstrøm

Following the Wake for Piano Trio (2005)
Cantos al Amor (2007)

Ib Norholm

Piano Trio (1959)

Vítezslav Novák

Piano trio in g minor, Op. 1
Piano trio in d minor ‘Quasi una ballata’, Op. 27

Per Nørgaard

Piano Trio 'Spell' (1974)

Andrej Ocenas

Trio, Op. 36 (1967)

Christian Palmer

Piano Trio No. 1 in E-flat major (1866)
Piano Trio No. 2 in A major
Piano Trio No. 3 in F major
Piano Trio No. 5 in C major

Andrzej Panufnik

Piano Trio (1945 reconstructed, 1997 revised)

Arvo Pärt

Mozart - Adagio for piano trio

Andrián Pertout

Piano Trio 'Sonus dulcis' (2004)

Rudolf Petzold

Piano Trio, Op. 39 (1961)

Hans Pfitzner

Trio F Major, Op.8

John Pickard

Piano Trio (1990)

Gabriel Pierne

Piano Trio, Op. 45 (1922)

Willem Pijper

Piano Trio, Op. 7 (1914)

Werner Pirchner

Wem gehört der Mensch...? PWV 31 (1988)
Heimat? PWV 29a (1992)

Georg Pircmayer

Piano Trio 'Transition' (1956)

Felipe Pires

Piano Trio (1960)

Walter Piston

Piano Trio (1935)

Manuel Ponce

Piano Trio 'Romantico' (1941)

Mel Powell

Piano Trio (1994)

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Trio Elégiaque No.1 in g minor, Op. posth. (1892)
Trio Elégiaque No. 2 in d minor, Op. 9 (1893)

Joachim Raff

Trio No. 1 in c minor, Op. 102
Trio No. 2 in G major, Op. 112
Trio No. 3 in a minor, Op. 155
Trio No. 4 in D major, Op. 158

Erhard Ragwitz

Piano Trio (1965)

Osmo Tapio Raihala

Piano Trio 'Dialogues' (2003)

David Rakowski

Piano Trio (1985)

Maurice Ravel

Piano Trio in a minor (1914)

Alan Rawsthorne

Piano Trio (1962)

Camden Reeves

Piano Trio 'Starlight Squid' (2001)

Max Reger

Piano Trio in e minor, Op. 102 (1907)

Anton Reicha

Sonata in C major, Op. 47 (1804)
Six Trios Concertants, Op. 101 (1824)
Trio (1824)

Carl Reinecke

Piano Trio, Op. 188 (1887)

Otto Reinhold

Piano Trio (1915)

Franz Reizenstein

Piano Trio, Op. 34 (1957)

Konrad Rennert

Crossing the bar - Fraktur XIII (1997)

Josef Rheinberger

Piano Trio in d minor, Op. 34 (1862)
Piano Trio in A major, Op. 112 (1878)
Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 121 (1880)
Piano Trio in F major, Op. 191 (1898)

Josef Rheinberger

Piano Trio No. 3, Op. 121 (1881)

Wallingford Riegger

Piano Trio, Op. 1 (1919)

Ferdinand Ries

Piano Trio in c minor

Robert Rival

Piano Trio (2005)

George Rochberg

Piano Trio (1963)

Kurt Roger

Trio in E-flat major, Op. 77 (1953)

Julius Röntgen

Piano Trio No. 1 B-flat Major, Op. 23 (1883)
Piano Trio No. 2 in D major (1898)
Piano Trio No. 3 in g minor (1898)
Piano Trio No. 4 in c minor, Op. 50 (1904)

Michael Rosenzweig

Piano Trio (2000)

Nikolai Roslavets

Piano Trio No. 1 (1919)
Piano Trio No. 2 (1920)
Piano Trio No. 3 (1921)
Piano Trio No. 4 (1927)

Albert Roussel

Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 2

Edmund Rubbra

Piano Trio in One Movement, Op. 68 (1950)
Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 138 (1970)

Anton Rubinstein

Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 15 No. 1
Piano Trio No. 2 in g minor, Op. 15 No. 2
Piano Trio No. 3 in B-flat, Op. 52
Piano Trio No. 4 in A, Op. 85
Piano Trio No. 5 in c minor, Op. 108

Joseph Ryelandt

Piano Trio No. 1 in b minor, Op. 57 (1915)
Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 131 (1944)

Camille Saint-Saëns

Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 18 (1863)
Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor, Op. 92 (1892)
Le Carnaval des Animaux (1886)

Alfredo Sangiorgi

Tre invenzioni (1947)

Maurice Saylor

Piano Trio 'Terse Metamorphosis' (2004)

Philipp Scharwenka

Trio No.1 in c-sharp minor, Op. 100

Xavier Scharwenka

Trio No. 1 in f-sharp minor, Op. 1
Trio No. 2 in a minor, Op. 45

Martin Scherzinger

Piano Trio 'Across the Dancing Ground' (1997)

Karl Schiske

Sonatina, Op. 34 (1952)

Helmut Schmidinger

... schickt sich wahrscheinlich nicht in einem so ernsten Konzert. (2003)

Tobias Schneid

Pianotrio No. 2 (2007)

Alfred Schnittke

Piano Trio (adapted in 1992 from string trio (1985))

Daniel Schnyder

Piano Trio (2003)

Arnold Schoenberg

Transfigured Night, Op. 4
Sonnet CCXVII by Petrarch (Op. 24/IV)

Paul Schoenfield

Cafe Music

Robert Schollum

Halbturn Evening Music, Op. 95 (1975)

Franz Schubert

Piano Trio #1 in B-flat major, D. 898
Piano Trio #2 in E-flat major, D. 929
Piano Trio in B-flat major ‘Sonatensatz’, D. 28
Piano Trio in E-flat major ‘Nocturne’ (Adagio only), D. 897
16 German Dances and 2 Ecossaises, Op. 33 / D. 783

Philip Schuessler

Piano Trio 'One More Moment' (2000)

Clara Schumann

Trio in g Minor, Op. 17

Robert Schumann

Piano Trio No. 1 in d minor, Op. 63
Piano Trio No. 2 in F major, Op. 80
Piano Trio No. 3 in g minor, Op. 110
Fantasiestücke in a minor, Op. 88
6 Stücke in canonischer Form, Op. 56

Joseph Schwantner

Piano Trio 'Autumn Canticles' (2005)

Elliott Schwartz

Piano Trio 'Tapestry' (1966)

Friedrich Schwarzacher

Trio 47/99

Kurt Schwertsik

Bagatellen in stark wechselnder Laune, Op. 36 (1979)

Leif Segerstam

Trio No. 2 'Thoughts in One Movement' (2003)

Ralph Shapey

Piano Trio (1953-5)

Gerald Shapiro

Piano Trio (1990)
Piano Trio 'For Martin' (1995)
Piano Trio No. 2 (2003)

Vache Sharafyan

Piano Trio No. 2 'Dream of Dreams' (2003)

Judith Shatin

Piano Trio 'View from Mt. Nebo' (2004)

Vissarion Shebalin

Trio in a minor, Op. 39 (1946)

Bright Sheng

Piano Trio (2001)

Michael Sheppard

Piano Trio (2006)

Seymour Shifrin

Piano Trio (1974)

Dmitri Shostakovich

Piano Trio No. 1 in c minor, Op. 8 (1923)
Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor, Op. 67 (1944)

Jean Sibelius

Piano Trio No. 1 in a minor (1884)
Allegro for Piano Trio (1886)
Piano Trio No. 2 in a minor ‘Havträsk’ (1886)
Piano Trio No. 3 in D major (1887)
Andantino for Piano Trio (1888)
Piano Trio No. 4 in C major ‘Loviisa’ (1888)

W. Siegel

Piano Trio 'Rapids' (2006)

Adam Silverman

Piano Trio 'Sturm' (2002)

Pwyll ap Siôn

Piano Trio (1995)

Bedrich Smetana

Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 15

Julia Smith

Piano Trio (1966)

Linda Catlin Smith

Piano Trio 'Ribbon' (2001)

Jose Soler

Piano Trio (1963)

Mauricio Sotelo

Piano Trio (2007)

Rick Sowash

Four Piano Trios (2000)

Leopold Spinner

Piano Trio (1955)

Benjamin Staern

Piano Trio (2004)

Victor Steinhardt

Piano Trio (1998)

Richard Strauss

Piano Trio No. 1 in A major, Op. 37
Piano Trio No. 2 in D major, Op. 53

Josef Suk

Piano Trio in c minor, Op. 2
Elegie for Piano Trio, Op. 23

Georgy Sviridov

Trio a minor, Op. 61

Bent Sørensen

Piano Trio 'Phantasmagoria' (2007)

Jenö Takács

Trio-Rhapsodie, Op. 11

Toru Takemitsu

Between tides (1993)

Sergei Taneyev

Piano Trio in D major, Op. 22

Alexandre Tansman

Trio No. 2 (1939)

Alexandr Tcherepnin

Piano Trio (1925)

Boris Tchaikovsky

Trio in D Major (1953)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Piano Trio in a minor, Op. 50

Aleksandr Georgievitch Tchugaev

Trio (1975/79)

Sigismond Thalberg

Trio in A major, Op. 69

Augusta Read Thomas

Piano Trio 'a circle around the sun' (2000)

Antoine Tisne

Piano Trio (1973)

Vladimir Tošic

Piano Trio 'Varial' (1990)

Donald Tovey

Piano Trio (1910)

Joan Tower

Piano Trio 'For Daniel' (2008)
Piano Trio 'They're Off' (1997)

Arlene Seirra Truel

Piano Trio (1995)

Joaquín Turina

Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 35
Piano Trio No. 2 in b minor, Op. 76
Circulo for Piano Trio, Op. 91

Mark-Anthony Turnage

A Short Procession, for Piano Trio (2003)

Alfred Uhl

Piano Trio (1975)

Nicholas Underhill

Piano Trio (2005)

Erich Urbanner

...in Bewegung...’ Trio (1990)

Fartein Valen

Piano Trio, Op. 5 (1924)

Peteris Vasks

Episodi e Canto Perpetuo (1985)

David Vayo

Piano Trio (1998)

Octavio Vazquez

Piano Trio No. 1 'Guernica' (1995)

Antonio Veracini

Piano Trio (1973)

Sandor Veress

Tre quadri (1963)

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Piano Trio (1911)

Pancho Vladigerov

Trio b-flat minor, Op. 4 (1916)

Ernst Vogel

Piano Trio (1971)

Kevin Volans

Piano Trio (2003)

Robert Volkmann

Piano Trio, Op. 3 (1917)

Andrew Waggoner

Piano Trio (2007)

Orianna Webb

Piano Trio (2007)

Karl Weigl

Trio (1938)

Douglas Weiland

Trio in one movement, Op. 22
Pavey Ark (Trio No. 2), Op. 32

Mieczyslaw Weinberg

Piano Trio, Op. 24

Judith Weir

Piano Trio (1998)

Stefan Weisman

Piano Trio (1991)

Harri Wessman

Piano Trio No. 2 'Retorinen' (1992)

Kenny Wheeler

A Little Peace for Piano Trio (2002)

Gillian Whitehead

Piano Trio (2004)

Hermann Wichmann

Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 10

Ernst Widmer

A Ultima Flor, Op. 60 (1968)

Charles Widor

Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 19 (1875)

Benjamin Williams

Piano Trio (2000)

Ian Wilson

Piano Trio No. 3 (1996)

Christian Wolff

Piano Trio 'I Like to Think of Harriet Tubman' (1985)

Charles Wuorinen

Piano Trio (1983)

Isang Yun

Trio (1972/75)

Roger Zahab

Piano Trio 'Transparence' (2000)

Judith Lang Zaimont

Piano Trio 'Zones' (2003)

Arlene Zallman

Piano Trio 1999 (2000)

Frank Zappa

Piano Trio (1987)

Bernd Alois Zimmerman

Piano Trio 'Presence' (2005)

Evan Ziporyn

Piano Trio (2005)

Djuro Zivkovic

Piano Trio (2001)

Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon

Piano Trio 'Jacara' (2007)

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Piano Trio

Otto Zykan

G-kettet (1996)
Drei Bagatellen (1998)

Trio Con Brio

Soo-Jin Hong, violin
Soo-Kyung Hong, cello
Jens Elvekjaer, piano

Friday, December 15, 2006

Undeutlicheit: Acoustic Surprise in Extemporaneous Performance

DSM: Pomerium performed in The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City last night. That cathedral sanctuary is beautiful but cavernous—a rectangular shape about 40 meters long, by 20 meters wide, by 20 meters high, with a horizontal-half-cylinder plaster ceiling. It’s a cruciform building plan with a nave crossed by a stubby transept, and the stone altar is in the center of the large nave, raised several steps up from the main floor. The members of Pomerium assembled themselves on those steps in front of the altar. The audience in their winter-time clothing filled the pews in the long part of the nave, so there was an acoustically absorptive-dissipative effect over there. And the upper part of the nave, beyond the transept, was empty pews all the way to the apse—a highly echoic effect in that direction.

CMT: Yes, I was there. Several times during the performance it seemed to me that Alexander Blachly, the director, was re-gauging the reverberation in the cathedral—making adjustments in his direction for attacks, releases, dynamics, and so on, based on his evolving impressions of the acoustics and how the acoustics of the sanctuary was affecting the sound of the various parts and registers. Despite Pomerium having performed in venues like this since the group’s founding in 1972, he and the singers seemed last night to be genuinely and continuously ‘surprised’ by the characteristics of this particular cathedral. I could only imagine that he was wishing he’d had a chance to more extensively check the acoustic properties of the church in advance of the performance!

DSM: Well, there’s checking and then there’s checking. Only a standing ensemble who routinely performs in a familiar, consistent venue really has a chance to truly know and adapt to the strengths and limitations of that venue. What could you do, besides a rehearse in the room? A well-known and basic method for characterizing the acoustical characteristics of a room is to measure the response at a particular microphone position to a brief source of energy, such as a “blank” pistol shot (not usually done in churches) or a hand clap. The use of a deterministic signal (e.g., long-length sequence, sine-wave sweep) is also possible. From the perspective of room acoustic quality, the result usually involves visual inspection of a graphic display of the “room impulse response”, that is, the root-mean-square pressure of the real part of the analyzed signal, measured in decibels as a function of time. A similar sort of graphic can be obtained from a modeling program that uses ray tracing or other techniques for predicting, rather than measuring, the room impulse response. This information can be used for both analyzing the acoustics of a real room or for simulation of the acoustics of a virtual room. You wouldn’t find regular musicians doing that sort of thing—especially not on the budgets that typify chamber music and early music. But, if you had your ‘druthers’, that’s the sort of thing that you’d like to do…

CMT: And then post-analysis of the reflection amplitudes relative to the level of the direct sound would determine their significance in terms of audibility and clarity. Early reflections are well-known to be potentially detrimental to timbre reproduction, speech intelligibility, and the formation of spatial images in a sound field.

DSM: You remember in Bang&Olufsen’s old ‘Archimedes’ project, the hypothesis to be tested in the project was that the interaction between the sound source and the room has an influence on the perceived sound quality (timbre)? The hypothesis was verified in a Round Robin Test (RRT) in different listening rooms, which included as variables the room, the directivity of the source, and position of the sound source in the room. The results showed that the room has a significant influence on 1) the reproduction of timbre in all positions for all sources, 2) timbre differences between different sources in the same position, and 3) timbre differences between the same source in different positions.

CMT: Yes, in the B&O RRT, the purpose of the project was to examine the influence of individual reflections on the timbre or localization of sound reproduced by a single source in a listening room. The setup simulated the physics—mathematically speaking, the ‘transfer function’—of individual reflections in addition to the attenuation due to distance. The simulated transfer functions included the frequency response of the off-axis angle of the reflection path from the original loudspeaker and the frequency dependent attenuation of the reflection from the simulated room surfaces. The first-order floor reflection contributes on an individual basis to the timbre of the sound source for a sound field that has many harmonics—a noise signal, say; or an ensemble with lots of polyphony, many players and parts. An increase in the level of the first-order reflections either from the floor, the left-hand wall or the wall behind the listener will influence the timbre of later-arriving reflections and noise.

DSM: The threshold of detection for timbre and a noise signal seemed in that study to be determined by the spectral changes in the frequency range 500 Hz —2 kHz The threshold of detection for localization of the later reflections and noise seems to be determined by the spectral changes in a frequency region above 2 kHz.

CMT: I was thinking about that last night. Despite the fact that I sat in Row #2 not 10 meters from the center of Pomerium members, the soprano and alto and countertenor voices and their reflections were far more clearly audible than the bass. And as the singers changed positions with almost every piece, we had an unusual—Unintended!—opportunity to observe the effects on the different parts and registers. The baritones seemed to be immune to positional effects. The tenors were, at various points, the hapless victims.

DSM: You, pitying tenors? Hah! Although it’s common to characterize hall acoustics in terms of a single number—reverberation time—there’s much more detail that affects how listeners perceive the music, and how the performers and the director interact with each other. In a large room, listeners hear the direct sound of the performers, followed by many variably-delayed reflections of the sound—bouncing off many different surfaces that are at different distances from the performers and different distances from the listener. Early-arriving reflections within about 50 msec after the direct sound are especially important—our brain tends to associate them with the direct sound, and we perceive it as louder rather than being diverted by a “different” sound. (This was published by Haas in 1951, but it was something others had known about for almost 100 years before that.) Later-arriving reflected sounds are not processed by the brain in this way, and cause one sound (note) to mask or interfere with the next. I think this is partly what was going on among the members of Pomerium last night.

CMT: Lochner and Burger developed the concept of “useful-to-detrimental” sound ratios, where ‘useful’ is the sum of the intensities of direct and early-reflected sounds and ‘detrimental’ is the sum of the late-arriving sounds plus background noise. Obviously, the judgments ‘useful’ and ‘detrimental’ are too simple for music—the ratios were developed initially for studying intelligibility of speech, not music. But other not-so-simple but more appropriate measures have been proposed—ones that take into account some of the values in musical aesthetics. Gade’s ST1 metric, for example. That one is basically a metric that quantifies a musician’s ability to hear himself/herself and maintain a graceful balance of his/her own instrument or voice with that of the others.

DSM: You could see in the singers’ eyes the fact that they were exploring that cave, that sanctuary—discovering as they sang their way through it just what acoustical support the chamber was giving (or not giving) to their performance. The subjective impression you could read in their eyes was “…I need to have some sensation that my voice has filled this chamber … I am trying to find out when my voice has reached the last row of seats … I want to feel that my voice has slapped back to the altar here.”

CMT: Yes, really, what impressed me last night—apart from the beauty that Pomerium achieved in their singing—was their esprit de corps in adapting to the idiosyncratic acoustic properties of the cathedral. The uncertainty of the acoustics—in a chamber where the performers didn’t have the luxury of being able to rehearse and calibrate themselves to the reverb or other effects in advance, and therefore have to discover and adjust their performance on-the-fly—this didn’t daunt them. In fact, it’s a type of “inadvertent improvisation” that’s typical of early-music performances in cathedrals or other historical venues. Some performers are annoyed by it, I know. But, facing the challenges head-on, Pomerium seemed to find the “discovery” aspects of extemporizing their performance in that cavernous chamber illuminating. Sort of like camaraderie in rock-climbing or other “extreme sports”. When successful, this does tend to bring the aesthetic-athletic feeling of “winning”. Maybe early music in period-appropriate settings is inherently ‘extreme’ chamber music!

DSM: So is it the shape of the chamber that matters most? Is it the sheer volume or size of it that matters? Is it the position of the sound source and the position of the listener that dominate these things? Are some particular registers of the instruments or voices affected more than others, based on the geometry of the room and some resonances or harmonics that the room supports? Is it the “people density”—the room’s volume in cubic-meters-per-person?

CMT: All of those things, in various complicated ways. You might want to have a look at one or more of these recent books on acoustical physics and architectural acoustics.