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!
Thank you for the useful post. There are indeed many new piano trios awaiting additional performances and championing by ensembles. I appreciate your leg work in finding and listing my piece "Extreme Measures." It is a lively, challenging, and virtuosic work that under the right group is a bundle of energy! For more information please go to my website www.joelfriedman.comBest,Joel
It was great pleaser for me to find my trios no. 1, and no.2 "dream of dreams" in your site. Thank you for listing my music.I find your site really very important and actual, as compositions needed at least to be listed for consideration and your site really can work very nicely for promotion of the trio music and making contacts between performers and composers. I think this is very important, as the music can succeed only by the collaboration of three factors composer-performer-listener, and only according to the mutual hard work of the first two factors the third can happen. Please, visit my personal web site http://sharafyan.tripod.comCordially yours,Vache Sharafyan
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2 comments:
Thank you for the useful post. There are indeed many new piano trios awaiting additional performances and championing by ensembles. I appreciate your leg work in finding and listing my piece "Extreme Measures." It is a lively, challenging, and virtuosic work that under the right group is a bundle of energy! For more information please go to my website www.joelfriedman.com
Best,
Joel
It was great pleaser for me to find my trios no. 1, and no.2 "dream of dreams" in your site. Thank you for listing my music.
I find your site really very important and actual, as compositions needed at least to be listed for consideration and your site really can work very nicely for promotion of the trio music and making contacts between performers and composers. I think this is very important, as the music can succeed only by the collaboration of three factors composer-performer-listener, and only according to the mutual hard work of the first two factors the third can happen.
Please, visit my personal web site http://sharafyan.tripod.com
Cordially yours,
Vache Sharafyan
Post a Comment