Kristian Winther, Timo-Veikko Valve and Aura Go are no strangers to UKARIA. Each of these celebrated soloists and chamber musicians has featured frequently in recent years amid their busy and varied schedules around Australia and internationally, but Winther, Valve and Go have rarely performed together.

This special performance for UKARIA is a unique opportunity to hear them explore the specificity and diversity of the piano trio genre, courtesy of a program that features familiar compositional voices – Beethoven and Schumann – in conversation with voices that may be lesser-known – the Finnish composer Helvi Leiviskä, and the French composer Lili Boulanger (sister of Nadia). Beethoven’s Ghost Trio is a beloved staple of the piano trio repertoire, but Helvi Leiviskä’s 1924 Piano Trio – composed while she was a student at the Helsinki Music Institute – and Lili Boulanger’s 1918 trio D’un Soir Triste – composed in the year of her death at the tragically young age of twenty-four – offer distinctive perspectives and approaches to the piano trio: here are two young women, living in different parts of Europe in the early twentiethcentury, conjuring very different sonic landscapes for this combination of instruments. The program closes with Robert Schumann’s D minor Piano Trio, a work that tests the limits of the genre: volatile, turbulent, despairing, but also yearning, gleeful, truly jubilant – this is Schumann at his intoxicating best.

PROGRAM

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Piano Trio in D, Op. 70 No. 1 Ghost (26')

I. Allegro vivace e con brio
II. Largo assai ed espressivo
III. Presto

Helvi Leiviskä (1902–1982)
Piano Trio (19')

Lili Boulanger (1893–1918)
D’un Soir Triste (10')

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63 (31')

I. Mit Energie und Leidenschaft
II. Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch
III. Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung
IV. Mit Feuer