Claremont Trio
Jasper String Quartet “brand”? R.H. Freivogel: We’ve realized that we love complex music that people don’t usually know. With a piece like Berg’s Lyric Suite, we’ll take it apart to show people what’s so great about it, and then perform it for them. The best compliment is when someone says, “You know, I don’t really like Berg’s music, but when you play it like that, it all makes sense.” J Freivogel: This question came up every few months—when we were students, especially: what is it that’s going to make us important? We thought about it often. It was important for us to realize that we didn’t know, at a certain point. We’re constantly searching. When we came across Aaron Jay Kernis’s music, it just made sense to us. It fit with all our goals. I think that’s why we are now really confident in what we’re doing with his work. We are really the only quartet playing it right now, and it’s incredible. Commissioning and working with living composers has been really important for us, because it gives us an understanding of what it would have been like to work with, say, Beethoven. Working with someone like Kernis, or Lera Auerbach, you’re getting an insight into the mind of a great composer. You can find parallels to the great composers of the past by working with the great composers of today. n
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Lisa-Marie Mazzucco
Reynolds: Is there a
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he only piano trio ever to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, the Claremont Trio consists of a pair of identical twins—violinist Emily Bruskin and cellist Julia Bruskin—and pianist Donna Kwong, whom they met at Juilliard in 1999. Committed to expanding the trio repertoire, the Claremont has commissioned new works by a number of contemporary composers. In 2012 they will premiere works by Sean Shepherd, Helen Grime, and Gabriela Lena Frank in a three-concert series celebrating the grand opening of Calderwood Hall at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The trio has also performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Nashville, Virginia, Pacific, and Utah symphonies, among others. Reynolds: There must be pieces that you’ve performed many times. Do you get déjà vu? Emily Bruskin: For me, performing is communicating something to an audience. It’s a little bit like being an actor telling a story many times. It’s repetitive inherently, but since you’re telling it to new people each time it always feels like a new process—like you’re explaining something funny that happened, but you’re explaining it to a different person each time. Reynolds: Advice for a quartet going through a rough
patch? Julia Bruskin: I’ll share a piece of advice we received from pianist Joseph Kalichstein: it’s really easy to stick with your group when things are going well and you have lots of successes. A real group is one that will stand by each other when things are difficult as well. A lot of new groups have a honeymoon period when things are going well, but then people go off in different directions. But if you can stick together through those sticky parts—that’s when a group really comes together. Reynolds: When should a fledgling group start think-
Donna Kwong, piano; age 33 Emily Bruskin, violin; age 32 Julia Bruskin, cello; age 32 ing about marketing? Donna Kwong: In the early stages it’s hard because you’re still developing your voice, and still learning to play well together. But I think marketing is something that shouldn’t be ignored. It shouldn’t be artificial, but music is a performing art, and if you want people to come to your concerts, you have to think about the marketing side. You can’t just be stuck in the practice room. E. Bruskin: We live in a world where you can’t just do something great and expect people to discover you. Especially in the classical music world, there isn’t a gigantic audience out there begging for the next release of Mozart trios. You have to find a way to reach out to people and show them why you love this music that you’re playing. Reynolds: What’s the best thing about working as a
group? E. Bruskin: Everyone has different strengths: may-
be somebody’s really excited about setting up a blog; somebody else will find the cheapest bus or plane ticket to Richmond, Virginia; and somebody else is really good at writing thank-you notes. There’s an opportunity for the division of labor. Reynolds: Ever long for the soloist’s life? Kwong: Playing the piano can be a very lonely thing.
You could go your entire life as a pianist and never play with anybody, if you wanted to, whereas a string player would have to play with accompaniment eventually. As a young person I just got hooked on playing with other people. I didn’t go to Juilliard thinking, “I’m going to make a chamber music career with this.” But all along I’ve played chamber music, and I can’t imagine not doing it. EILEEN REYNOLDS is a New York-based bassoonist and freelance writer whose work has been featured by The Forward, The Believer, newyorker.com, WNYC’s Soundcheck, and NPR’s All Things Considered.
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WINTER 2012