Founded in 2008, Trio Solis combines three dynamic virtuosi, Corinne Stillwell (violin), Gregory Sauer (cello), and Read Gainsford (piano), all faculty artists at Florida State University's College of Music. Joining them is the versatile Karen Pommerich (viola), a violinist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Corinne Stillwell (violin) earned her degrees from The Juilliard School, where she first enrolled at age ten. A versatile musician, she has appeared in recital at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, on the Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago, and as soloist with numerous orchestras across the United States and on tour in Eastern Europe. Her chamber music activities have included performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and at the festivals of Aspen, Norfolk, Skaneateles, the Victoria Bach Festival, and the International Festival-Institute at Round Top in Texas. Frequently heard on WXXI-FM public radio, she has collaborated with David Shifrin, Robert Levin, Pepe Romero, members of the Pro Arte and Cavani quartets, and members of the faculty at the Eastman School of Music. She has served as Assistant Concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic and prior to that, was a member of the Harrington String Quartet in Amarillo, Texas. In 2007, Ms. Stillwell joined the faculty at Florida State's College of Music, where she is Assistant Professor of Violin.
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Praised for his versatility,
Gregory Sauer (cello) has appeared in numerous solo recitals, including performances at the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the Brightmusic Concert Series in Oklahoma City, and numerous chamber music performances have included appearances at Tanglewood, Aspen Music Festival, Santa Fe Promusica, and the Boulder Modern Music Festival, among many others. Greg has performed concertos with the Houston Symphony, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, the Quad City Symphony, and Oklahoma City Philharmonic, to name only a few. A Prizewinner in the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Ima Hogg national competitions, he served nine seasons as principal cellist of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Sauer is Assistant Principal Cello of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and, prior to joining the Florida State University music faculty in 2006, he taught at the University of Oklahoma for 11 years, where he was named Presidential Professor in 2005.
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Read Gainsford (piano) has performed widely in the USA, Europe, Australia, South Africa, and his native New Zealand as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician. He has made successful solo debuts at the Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, and has performed in many other prestigious venues, including the Kennedy Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican Centre, Fairfield Halls, Birmingham Town Hall and St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. Dr. Gainsford has recorded for the Amoris label, BBC Radio Three, Radio New Zealand's Concert Programme, and has broadcast on national television in New Zealand, the UK, and Yugoslavia. Since moving to the United States in 1992, Read has been a guest artist for the American Music Teachers Association, has appeared at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival and the Music Festival of the Hamptons, and has spent several summers at the Heifetz International Music Institute. He is a member of the contemporary music group Ensemble X, and also the Garth Newel Chamber Players. Formerly on the faculty of Ithaca College where he received the college-wide
Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004, Dr. Gainsford became Associate Professor of Piano at FSU in 2005.
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Although for this performance she plays the viola,
Karen Pommerich has played violin with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1991, and has appeared as soloist with the JSO for Haydn’s
Sinfonia Concertante and Mozart’s
Adagio and Rondo. Prior to moving to Jacksonville she was the Principal 2nd Violin of the Tallahassee Symphony, and in 2008 she was Principal 2nd Violin with the Sarasota Opera and began performing with the IRIS Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee. During the summer months Ms. Pommerich is the Assistant Principal 2nd Violin with the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and she has played both violin and viola in numerous chamber ensembles. She has coached chamber ensembles and sectionals of the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra, Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, and the Prelude Chamber Music Camp. Additionally, Karen teaches privately and is active in the Body and Soul program, which delivers live music in health care settings.
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PROGRAM NOTES by Ed Lein, Music Librarian
The music of the transcendent German composer
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) formed the culmination of the Classical style and the foundation of the Romantic, and his revolutionary masterworks still provide benchmarks other composers strive to attain. Beethoven wrote the
“Ghost” Trio, Op. 70, no. 1, in 1808, and along with his
“Archduke” Trio, Op. 97, he created what have remained the best-known works in the genre for two centuries. Although composed immediately following his
“Pastoral” Symphony (No. 6), Op. 68, the
“Ghost “ Trio actually shares some thematic material with his
Symphony No. 2, Op. 36. Beethoven’s
“Ghost” Trio got its nickname from Carl Czerny (1791-1857), a pupil of Beethoven who became a famous musician in his own right, because the tremolos in the slow movement reminded him of the ghost scene in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet. This association with Shakespeare and the supernatural is perhaps not entirely fanciful: Beethoven’s sketches indicate that as he worked on the
Trio he was toying with writing an opera based on
Macbeth!
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Although
Arno Babajanian (sometimes transliterated
Babadjanyan, 1921-1983) is virtually unknown in this country, the Soviet-Armenian virtuoso pianist and composer of everything from pop tunes and jazz pieces to classical works and musicals remains a national hero in his homeland. In addition to a 2006 Armenian commemorative postage stamp, a monument to him was erected in 2002 in Yerevan, the Armenian capital and his hometown, but a public outcry deemed that the sculpture was more a caricature than a likeness, so it had to be reworked and was officially re-unveiled in 2003. While he was in kindergarten Babajanian’s precocious talent was discovered (or at least suspected) by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978), and the famous composer insisted that the 5-year-old receive formal musical training. So when Babajanian was seven he was enrolled in the Yerevan Conservatory, and he later continued his training at the Moscow Conservatory. Much like Khachaturian, Babajanian absorbed characteristics of Armenian folk music into his own style, and his later works also show influences of Bartók and Prokofiev, and sometimes even Schoenberg. His 1952
Trio, cited as one of Babajanian’s most important works, is unified by the recurrence of the opening theme in all three movements.
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Austrian-born
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), unquestionably one of the greatest composers in history, began his career touring Europe as a 6-year-old piano prodigy, and he absorbed and mastered all the contemporary musical trends he was exposed to along the way. He wrote more than 600 works, including 22 operas and over three dozen symphonies, plus numerous concertos, chamber works, piano pieces, and choral works. Written in 1785, Mozart’s
Piano Quartet No. 1, KV 478, is the earliest masterpiece for a surprisingly rare performance ensemble combining piano with string trio—Haydn wrote nothing for piano quartet and Beethoven never returned to the medium after three very early
Piano Quartets, WoO 36, coincidentally also written in 1785 when Beethoven was only 14. Mozart was originally commissioned to write a set of three quartets suitable for amateur musicians, but the publisher canceled the order for the last two quartets because the first one was too difficult for amateurs, and he feared the new quartets would be unlikely to return a profit. Nonetheless, this
Quartet is one of Mozart’s finest creations, and the great Czech Romantic composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) borrowed the opening theme for the finale of his
String Quintet, Op. 1. Always strapped for cash, Mozart luckily got to keep the advance payment from the commission, but even with the commission canceled Mozart found the instrumentation artistically rewarding, enough so that he returned to it 9 months later, producing his
Piano Quartet No. 2, KV 493.
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