Goethe Institut – an evening of chamber music in the Opera House

– Sun 28 Oct 2008, 8pm – HCMC
– Fri 03 Oct 2008, 8pm – Hanoi –
Abegg Trio

The HCMC concert is in the Conservatory of Music, 112 Nguyen Du, District 1, HCMC. Free tickets available from Mon 22 Sept 2008 at Goethe Institut HCMC (see ‘Tickets’, below).

The Hanoi concert is in the Hanoi Opera House, 1 Trang Tien, Hanoi. Free tickets available from Fri 26 Sept 2008 at Goethe Institut Hanoi (contact info below).

In 2006 the Abegg Trio celebrated its 30th anniversary. The trio, composed of Ulrich Beetz (violin), Birgit Erichson (violoncello) and Gerrit Zitterbart (piano), has been playing together since 1976. Critics have acclaimed their performances “extraordinary” in many different ways.

Program:

Dimitri Schostakowitsch   Piano trio C minor op.8 (1923)
Ludwig van Beethoven      Piano trio C minor op. 1,3 (1793/94)
Johannes Brahms              Piano trio B major op.8 (amended version 1889)

Intuitive understanding shapes the harmony of their playing – a sense of harmony which can only inspire an ensemble which for three decades has devoted with undiminished joy its energy and passion to interpretations that remain faithful to the original.

This energy was praised many years ago by one of the most prominent German music critics, Joachim Kaiser, when he wrote about the Abegg Trio:

“These young musicians take the musical texts, the results of research, unusually seriously. They do not perform chamber music in an innocuous or sentimental manner; they want to produce interpretations of weight and aggressiveness and of the greatest inner truth.”

This interpretative approach was honored at the beginning of their work together with awards in competitions in Germany and abroad: Colmar and Geneva in 1977, Bonn in 1979, Bordeaux in 1981, the Bernhard Sprengel Prize in 1986, the Robert Schumann Prize in 1992. They have been invited to make concert and festival appearances in 50 countries, including regular trips to North America.

The Abegg Trio is characterized by a never-ending curiosity for musical discovery; their most recent activities have included work with historic instruments. Works of Mozart, Kraus, Haydn, Beethoven, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Donizetti und Schubert are performed with fortepianos after Anton Walter (Vienna 1795) Broadwood (London 1808) and Fritz (Vienna 1825) and instruments with gut strings. In a new encounter with Johannes Brahms, the Trio uses fortepianos of Baptist Streicher from 1851, 1864 and 1876 in their most recent CD recordings (horn trio op. 40, string sextet arranged for trio op. 36, clarinet trio op. 114 and trio in A major op. posth.)
In February 2006 the Trio recorded the rarely played early piano trios of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (KV 10-15), composed by the eight-year-old Wunderkind in London. For this recording, the Trio used a copy of a 1749 Silbermann fortepiano and a tangentenflügel.

The more than 25 CD recordings of the Abegg Trio have received high critical praise and many awards, including the “German Record Critics’ Award” five times.
Recordings by the Abegg Trio include piano trios by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Smetana, Brahms, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Janáček, Debussy, Ravel, Henze, Erdmann, Killmayer, Acker and Rihm.

In addition to their extensive concert activity, Ulrich Beetz and Gerrit Zitterbart are professors at the music academies in Weimar and Hanover. Birgit Erichson teaches as adjunct professor for chamber music at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Weimar. The members of the Abegg Trio pass on their experience and expertise to young musicians in master classes in the USA, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Rumania, Kyrgyzstan, Kazachstan, Uzbekistan, the Phillipines and North Korea. Ulrich Beetz plays violins by F. Antonius Luppo (1729) and Nicolas Lupot (1821); Birgit Erichson plays cellos of Andrea Castagneri (1747) and J. Baptist Salomon (1754).

Tickets:

HCMC: Free tickets available from Mon 22 Sept 2008 at
Goethe Institut HCMC
335/4 Dien Bien Phu
Tel. 08.925 20 11
E-mail: [email protected]

Hanoi: Free tickets available from Fri 26 Sept 2008 at Goethe Institut Hanoi (contact info below).