Cambridge Summer Music presents Gould Piano Trio

Lucy Gould violin
Alice Neary cello
Benjamin Frith piano

Haydn Trio in A flat, Hob XV: 14
Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht, arr. for piano trio by Eduard Steuermann
Brahms Trio in B Major, Op. 8

The award-winning Gould Piano Trio, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, is considered one of the finest ensembles of its kind performing today. Tonight’s concert opens with one of Haydn’s many piano trios – he composed about 45 of them – and displays the extraordinary inventiveness for which he is so rightly remembered.

Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (‘Transfigured Night’) is more commonly heard in its string sextet or string orchestra forms, but this piano trio arrangement by a pupil was sanctioned by the composer himself. A lush and ultra-romantic early work, it tells the story of a woman confessing to her lover on a moonlit walk that she is pregnant by another man.

Brahms’ wonderful B major piano trio is also an early composition, written when he was only twenty years old and full of the exuberance of youth.

“The only comparison that comes to mind is the old Beaux Arts Trio; the [Gould Piano Trio’s] combination of jeweller-like precision and a musical fire that ignites from the first bar.” The Washington Post