Photo credit Endre Balogh and Donna ColemanLight Hall Theater Tuesday, October 29 at 7:00PM.
The year 2019 marks the two hundredth birthday on September 13 of one of the world’s great—but relatively unsung—composers, Clara Wieck. A child prodigy, by the time she was a teenager she was already renowned as one of the best pianists in all of Europe, owing to the strict guidance of her father, Friedrich Wieck. When Clara was a mere eleven years of age, she attracted the attention of the already famous Robert Schumann (1811–1856), and one of the most enduring and passionate love stories of all time began. Years of court battles with Clara’s father prevented their marriage until one day short of her twenty-first birthday in 1840. For the next sixteen years, Clara and Robert supported and inspired each other in their creative endeavors, she mostly as concert pianist (and mother to their eight children, only half of whom survived beyond her lifetime) and he mostly as composer (and occasional conductor). Clara nevertheless continued to compose works that stand alongside those of her husband as equal masterpieces. She outlived her unfortunate husband by forty years, during which she pursued a relentless schedule of concertizing, child rearing, and serving as muse, friend, and advisor to illustrious musicians Johannes Brahms, Joseph Joachim, and others.
The Emerson Trio, although principally dedicated to the music of American composers, celebrates this milestone event in the life of an important female composer, presenting her beautiful Trio opus 17 in D minor—which was the direct inspiration for her husband’s series of three piano trios—along with the Trio opus 150 by American composer Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (another child prodigy, renowned concert pianist, and celebrated composer) and concluding with Robert Schumann’s Trio opus 80 in F major.
The Trio will perform as part of the 4th Annual President's Chamber Music Series at Light Hall on Tuesday, October 29 at 7:00PM. Tickets available at wnmu.edu/culture.
The Trio brings together musicians with long established careers on three continents, whose combined mission is to present the music of American composers in its historical and cultural context alongside works from the traditional chamber music repertory. The trio’s name is an homage to American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his fellow travelers Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and others whose philosophy and literary discourses influenced the music of Charles Edward Ives.
Endre Balogh has performed as violin soloist with orchestras around the world including the Berlin Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra, Frankfurt Symphony, Basel Symphony, the Angeles Philharmonic, and the orchestras of Washington DC, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, and Honolulu, working with eminent conductors Zubin Mehta, Edo de Waart, James de Priest, Lawrence Foster, Milton Katims, and Christoph von Dohnányi. An accomplished chamber music performer, Endre won several Coleman Chamber Music Awards, and he toured the United States, Canada, and Europe with the Pacific Trio for nearly thirty years.
Antony Cooke, author, composer, Hollywood studio musician, cellist, composer, conductor, teacher, and astronomer, began life in Australia, trained principally in London, and built a brilliant career as a cellist in Europe before settling in the United States where he is also a citizen. He held two academic positions, the University of South Florida and Northwestern University, before relocating to Los Angeles where he quickly established himself as one of the luminaries in the Hollywood recording industry, participating in approximately 1500 movie soundtracks, television and record productions. He is also the author of three books about Charles Ives:Charles Ives and His Road to the Stars, Charles Ives’s Musical Universe, and Charles Ives: The Making of the Composer.
Donna Coleman’s performances of American music earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina and the Southern Arts Federations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, Radcliffe College, and Second Prize in the first John F Kennedy Center International American Music Competition, among others. She recorded two internationally acclaimed compact discs of Charles Ives’s music, and two for ABC Classics, Rags to Riches: A Syncopated Century and Havana to Harlem, and her OutBach® label released Don’t Touch Me, the Danzas Cubanas by Ignacio Cervantes and The Lost Lady.