Seraphim Trio programme

The Tait Memorial Trust presents

Seraphim Trio A concert in memory of Janet Alstergren Webb

St Gabriel’s Church, Pimlico January 23rd 2017 at 7:30pm Principal Partner

Janet Alstergren Webb (1946 - 2016)

Tonight in this beautiful Church we are here to celebrate the life of our dearest friend, Janet Alstergren Webb. Janet was a ‘Chandelier’ of light in our world for more than 60 years.

She enjoyed a bountiful life with Graeme and her son, Alex.

Janet was entertaining, clever, loyal to her friends, and a wonderful artist. She had amazing grace, combined with being wicked and fun…

Janet was a Chandelier of light in our world...

She was adored by her family and friends…

We will miss her so much, and none of us will ever eat a chocolate again without silently celebrating our Jan. We were so lucky to know and love her.

CONCERT PROGRAMME

Beethoven Op. 1 No. 1 1. Allegro 2. Adagio cantabile 3. Scherzo: Allegro assai 4. Finale: Presto

Schubert trio in E flat Op. 100 1. Allegro 2. Andante con moto 3. Scherzando: Allegro moderato 4. Allegro moderato Please join us for a reception after the concert.

Save the Date - to book and more info www.taitmemorialtrust.org/events Tuesday 28th February 2017 From 11am, Reception 6pm

Australian Charity Art Auction | Australia House Exhibition Hall, Australia House, Strand, London, WC2B 4LA Please register to attend this exciting event to support Australian Charities in the UK

Monday 6th March 2017 7 for 7.30pm

Passion in the Salon | Leighton House 12 Holland Park Road, London, W14 8LZ Join Ross Alley for the 4th Concert in the Salon.

Featuring our current Tait Awardees

Wednesday 3rd May 2017 6 for 6.30pm

Tait Friends | Stoke Lodge 45 Hyde Park Gate, London, SW7 5DU Our 4th annual Friends event at Stoke Lodge.

Courtesy of the Australian High Commissioner, HE The Hon. Alexander Downer AC, and Mrs Nicola Downer AM

PROGRAMME NOTES Beethoven Op. 1 No. 1 The Beethoven piano trios do not form the comprehensive autobiographical statement of the piano sonatas or the string quartets, each of which he composed over the course of his lifetime, but bear the distinction of being the first works he officially published. The Opus 1 trios were published in 1795, while the Op. 11 Trio, the Gassenhauer dates from two years later. This was followed by an interval of eleven years, in which Beethoven systematically mastered the genres of string trio, string quartet and symphony, before he returned to the genre piano trio in 1808, equipped with an entirely new vocabulary.

In toto, the trios offer a fascinating map of Beethoven’s style, and with it the evolution of the genre. Over the course of these seven works, he takes the classical legacy of the trio, as bequeathed to him by Mozart and Haydn, and passes it on to the Romantics – Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn – equipped with a new scale of ambition. These later masters continued to develop the genre, but none exceeded the mastery, that perfect marriage of form and content, evinced in Beethoven’s trios. Beethoven’s trios are, in short, as close to perfection as this genre ever gets.

Mozart and Haydn are both credited with spawning the genre (one of several love children), and Beethoven’s Opus 1 trios bear the imprint of each earlier master. Famously urged by his patron, Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, to move to Vienna to ‘receive the spirit of Mozart through the hands of Haydn,’ Beethoven sought out lessons from Haydn, and there is much of his teacher’s influence in these works, not least in the sparkling pianism (Charles Rosen claimed that Haydn’s piano trios, along with the Mozart concertos, were ‘the most brilliant piano works before Beethoven’). Haydn’s influence is also apparent in the wit of Op. 1 No. 1, and the element of surprise: those harmonic pickles Beethoven gets himself into and then extracts himself from, like a Houdini of key regions.

Mozart’s influence is also evident throughout the set, both in the lyrical reach of the slow movements, and in the independence of the cello, liberated here from the piano’s left hand.

Beethoven’s new ambition for the genre is clear, as he expands the trio’s three-movement form to a symphonic four: these were display pieces by a young pianist-virtuoso, determined to make his mark in the grand salons of Vienna. From the ‘Mannheim Rocket’ that announces Op. 1 No. 1 (an upward arpeggio in the piano, with which he also begins his first Piano Sonata, Op. 2 No. 1), they bear Beethoven’s unmistakable thumbprint, offering tantalizing hints of the oeuvre to come: a chamber music laboratory for his future ideas. © Anna Goldsworthy

PROGRAMME NOTES Schubert trio in E flat ‘In his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker. To wander is the Romantic condition; one yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued by the terror of finding no escape.’ Alfred Brendel Born in Vienna in 1797, Schubert only ever gave one public recital, and much of his music remained unpublished until after his death. However, contrary to popular myth, he was not entirely unknown in his lifetime, with word of his artistry spreading through Vienna, thanks to a group of devoted friends who met regularly for ‘Schubertiades,’ or Schubert evenings. At the same time, Schubert was one of the greatest poets of loneliness, and his epic song cycle Winterreise is one of its greatest monuments (‘A stranger I arrived, a stranger I depart’). This is the flipside of the social Schubert: the Romantic artist adrift in a wintry landscape.

Schubert’s Trio in E flat exists between these poles of conviviality and inwardness.

Dating from the final, astonishingly productive year of his life, it mirrors the transition from the social values of Classicism to the intense subjectivities of Romanticism.

As the composer of more than 600 lieder, Schubert was master, above all, of song. His song lyrics can be read as a Rosetta stone of his musical meanings and speak of his enduring obsessions: love, death, nature, hope, despair. Song informs every movement of this trio, not least the haunting second movement, with an opening texture that recalls the first song in Wintterreise, ‘Gute Nacht’: ‘A stranger I arrived, a stranger I depart.’ Throughout the trio, the melodies are laid out spaciously, in glorious spun-out lines, rather than in the concise motives that can readily be deconstructed.

The pianist Alfred Brendel has said that ‘in his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker.’ In this trio, Schubert wanders to the extremes of human experience. There are still conversations within these textures, but they recall the vacillations of a single consciousness, poised on the brink of death, and at the same time able to see – vividly – the inverse of death. ‘Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain,’ he wrote in 1822. ‘And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love.’ The keen relief of these polarities gives this work its extraordinary dimension. In the final movement, Schubert brings us to the abyss, where he sings and dances anyway.

Despite its grand scale (Schumann wrote of Schubert’s ‘heavenly length’), this great work is a hymn to transience. © Anna Goldsworthy

SERAPHIM TRIO

Over the last two decades, Helen Ayres, Anna Goldsworthy and Tim Nankervis have remained steadfastly committed to chamber music – from building the contemporary repertoire, to developing new audiences and teaching the next generation of performers.

Inspiring others through intelligent programming and a deep knowledge and love of chamber music, Seraphim Trio never fails to delight audiences.

Winners of the Piano Trio Prize and the Audience Choice Award at the Australian National Chamber Music Competition in 2001 (now the Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition), Seraphim Trio has regularly performed at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the Peninsular Summer Music Festival and in 2013, Opera Australia’s Ring Festival in Melbourne.

Alongside its acclaimed subscription series Seraphim Trio is frequently broadcast on ABC Classic FM and on the MBS network, and maintains a robust commissioning program.

Seraphim frequently collaborates with Australia's leading musicians: most recently with Diana Doherty, Paul Dean, Lisa Harper-Brown and David Elton.

The group has studied in Germany with Hatto Beyerle, and in Australia with William Hennessy, Eleonora Sivan, Mark Mogilevski, Ronald Farren-Price and Lois Simpson. They recently released their fourth CD, a recording of selected Beethoven trios with ABC Classics.

Proudly supporting young Australian performing artists in the UK Founded in 1992

Principal Partner

Chairman Isla Baring OAM Founding Patrons Dame Joan Sutherland AC OM DBE, Viola, Lady Tait AM, John McCallum AO CBE, Googie Withers AO CBE Patrons Leanne Benjamin AM OBE, John Frost AM, Julian Gavin, The Dowager Countess of Harewood, Barry Humphries AO CBE, Piers Lane AO, June Mendoza AO OBE, Danielle de Niese, Ermes de Zan Trustees Justin Baring, Isla Baring OAM, Shirley Barr, Anne Longden, Susie Thornton The Leanne Benjamin Awards—Ballet Leanne Benjamin AM OBE, Artistic Director & Patron Committee Fay Curtin, Jan Gowrie-Smith, Caroline Hamilton, Ros Higgins, Wendy Kramer, Dr Margaret Mayston AM, Gayle McDermott, Sue McGregor, Patricia Nimmo, John Rendall, Margaret Rodgers, Ann Seddon, Jacqueline Thompson, Rosemary Tuck Music Board Caroline Almonte, Dr Helen Ayres, Isla Baring OAM, Shirley Barr, Jessica Cottis*, Julian Gavin, Jayson Gillham*, Dr Leslie Howard, Deborah Humble, Liane Keegan, Cameron Menzies, Anthony Roden, Katrina Sheppeard*, Chad Vindin* Member of Tait Artistic Planning Committee* Honorary Member Nicola Downer AM Executive Director James Hancock Registered charity 1042797

Tait Memorial Trust 4/80 Elm Park Gardens London SW10 9PD Phone +44 207 351 056 info@taitmemorialtrust.org www.taitmemorialtrust.org

The Tait Memorial Trust is pleased to be assisting these talented young Australian performing artists in 2016 Adopt a Performer Tait Scholar Higgins Scholar Loewenthal/White Award Whalley/Goldie-Morrison Award

Sally Law, violin Wayne Kwonn, cello Madeleine Randall Lisa Bucknell, viola

RCM RNCM GSMD RCM

The Leanne Benjamin Awards Tait Award Tait Award John Frost Award

Chloe Keneally, ballet Lauren Songberg, ballet Rebecca Blenkinsop, ballet

ENBS ENBS RBS

Ann Beilby, viola Sujin Park, violin Nathan Lay, baritone Emma Moore, soprano

Private Study Southbank Sinfonia WIAV Private Study

Andrey Lebedev, guitar Vivien Conacher mez sop Cameron Campbell, viola Nicholas Mooney, french horn Krystal Tunnicliffe, piano Ashlyn Tymms, mez sop Jo Dee-Yeoh, cello

RAM Private Study Private Study Southbank Sinfonia GSMD RCM RCM

Partner Award funding Royal Over-Seas League Tait & Sir Charles Mackerras Chair Aust. Int. Opera Awards John Frost/Frank & Viola Tait Award Bel Canto Awards, JS & RB Found.

Tait Awards Thornton Foundation Thornton Foundation Margaret Rodgers Award Margaret Rodgers Award Hunter family Award Louise Worthington Award VEC Acorn Trust Award