Cellist Gabriel Prynn says he and his Trio Fibonacci collaborators wanted to live up to Music Toronto’s Discovery Series by bringing music that will likely be unfamiliar to the ears of the Jane Mallett Theatre audience on Thursday evening. That novelty includes music both new and old.
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The programme features two works commissioned by the trio by contemporary Canadian composers known for their fine writing: Calgarian Laurie Radford and Montrealer Ana Sokolovic (best known in Toronto for her work with Queen of Puddings Music Theatre).
The audience will also hear two trios from the first half of the 19th century by George Onslow, an almost-forgotten English-born French composer who is very slowly earning fresh appreciation of his fine chamber music.
I’ve written about Onslow before, because his music truly warrants our attention. Onslow’s life (1784-1853) straddles the great transition between Classicism and Romanticism, so it naturally was overshadowed by Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn, not to mention the revolutionary Hector Berlioz in his own country.
But if we blow the dust off Onslow’s chamber music, it has all the grace underpinned by a fine sense of development and structure of one of the Germanic composers. The fact that there are no modern editions of his music doesn’t help his cause, which is sustained by word of mouth.
I asked Prynn how the ensemble came to put two of Onslow’s trios on the programme.
“First of all, the Trio has an international profile,” says Prynn. “I’m originally from England, [violinist] Julie-Anne [Derome] is Québecoise and [pianist] Wonny [Song] is from Korea. George Onslow was born in England, grew up in France and was most appreciated in Germany and Austria.”
Prynn says Derome had heard an Onslow string quartet on the radio one day, loved it and wanted to find out more about this composer. She discovered that he had written 10 trios for piano violin and cello.
“But there are no modern editions of these pieces,” continues Prynn. “So it took quite a bit of research. We had to find editions from the mid-19th century.”
Trio Fibonacci performed the two trios — Opp 27 and 83, the ninth and 10th — for the first time last fall at their usual Montreal concert venue, the intimate Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur.
Prynn loves the pieces because Onslow gave the cellist much more musical independence than was common at that time. All of the writing is, “quite virutosic,” he adds. Onslow was an accomplished pianist, so he gives anyone sitting at the keyboard a good workout.
The cellist says the last two of Onslow’s trios provide an interesting contrast, the first one, the last of an initial set of nine, having been completed in 1824, and the 10th one coming in 1851. “It was the last piece Onslow wrote,” says Prynn.
The 10th trio is, in keeping with the evolution of music at the time, much more Romantic. “The musical interest is shared equally among the three voices,” the cellist explains.
Prynn says a lot of thought went into finding the right mix of new and old for Thursday’s programme. “The big challenge is how to make connections between works,” he admits.
But because the trio made its initial connections through enthusiasm for each one of the three composers, chances are the audience will experience that, as well.
For concert details, click here.
For more background on Onslow, you can read my previous post here, and check out a not-recently-updated French enthusiast’s site devoted to the composer here.
And, for a taste of the Romantic Onslow, here are the final three movements of the Op. 83 Trio in F minor, which we’ll hear Thursday, performed by Trio Cascades. The Scherzo (the second clip) is particularly special:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
