Trio Bohémo Program
Olympic Valley Chapel, 4-6PM
Tahoe Music Alive proudly presents Trio Bohémo in concert on September 10 at Olympic Valley Chapel, bringing one of today’s most exciting chamber music ensembles to North Lake Tahoe.
Program includes:
Joseph Haydn, Piano Trio No. 5 in G Minor, Hob.XV:1
Benjamin Yusupov, Piano Trio No. 2, From Jewish Traditions
Intermission
Antonin Dvořák, Piano Trio No. 4 in e-minor, Op. 90, "Dumky"
Jan Vičar, Cycle of Folk Songs 'From Moravia': Moravian Folk Songs for Untrained Voices
Comprised of Matouš Pěruška (violin), Kristina Vocetková (cello), and Jan Vojtek (piano), Trio Bohémo has swiftly emerged as a powerful new voice on the international classical music scene. Formed through rigorous training at the European Chamber Music Academy, Trio Bohémo combines youthful energy with remarkable depth, refinement, and unity. Their performance at Olympic Valley Chapel promises an evening of expressive power, technical brilliance, and intimate musical conversation. It an unmissable event for chamber music lovers.
Program Notes
Trio Bohémo approaches this repertoire as a conversation among three musicians, but also as a conversation with the audience. “Once you get the feeling that you know what you want to say with the performance, inevitably that brings the inspiration and the energy to the performance,” says cellist
Kristina Vocetková.
Violinist Matouš Pěruška, who once dreamed of becoming a professional athlete, compares chamber music to playing on a team. Musicians and athletes alike train constantly to improve, he says, and in chamber music, “you need to cooperate well with your colleagues.”
Pianist Jan Vojtek describes an “unspoken vibe” musicians feel from an audience, one that can help define how they feel during a concert. That connection between musicians, music and audience runs through this program that moves from Haydn’s Classical-era piano trio to Benjamin Yusupov’s modern exploration of Jewish traditions, then after intermission to Dvořák’s deeply melodic Dumky Trio and a set of Moravian folk songs arranged specifically for Trio Bohémo.
Piano Trio in G minor, by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
I. Moderato
II. Minuet - Trio
III. Presto
This is one of Haydn’s early piano trios (1760), dating from the period associated with Sturm und Drang - the artistic movement whose leading figures included the young Goethe and emphasized heightened emotion, passion and dramatic contrast. Vocetková notes that these early trios were “not yet so virtuosic as the late ones,” but this work contains “very passionate moments … which are a bit unusual for the time.” She describes the music as “very sparkly, very virtuosic.” Its concluding Presto is “very vivid,” and she feels that vivid, passionate character makes the Haydn “a nice pairing” with the Yusupov work that follows.
From Jewish Traditions, by Benjamin Yusupov (1962 - )
Trio Bohémo has a particular affection for Yusupov’s From Jewish Traditions. “It’s a great piece. We have a sincere love for it.” They describe this modern work as a bold choice and recall a recent performance in England where the audience was initially apprehensive about the contemporary musical language but “ended up really enjoying it.” Vojtek describes the work as consisting of “three very, very distinct, separate movements,” each drawing on a different Jewish musical tradition. Each presents “very clear motives or songs from those Jewish traditions,” combined with modern, dissonant emphases. Each movement is dedicated to a specific tradition: the first to the Ashkenazi tradition. The second to the Ladino tradition, and the third- to a well-known Yemenite piyyut (religious liturgical poem.) “It’s very, very powerful,” Vojtek says. At times the first movement can be “intense and terrifying,” while the second movement is “just hauntingly beautiful.”
Asked whether the terrifying moments are more frightening for the audience or the musicians, the answer comes quickly: “Both.”
The musicians also hear a deeper historical dimension in the work, connecting its emotional power to the history of the Jewish people.
Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90, “Dumky,” by Antonín Dvořák (1881-1904)
Movement 1: Lento maestoso — Allegro quasi doppio movimento
Movement 2: Poco adagio — Vivace non troppo
Movement 3: Andante — Vivace non troppo
Movement 4: Andante moderato — Allegretto scherzando
Movement 5: Allegro — Meno mosso
Movement 6: Lento maestoso — Vivace
For Trio Bohémo, performing Dvořák’s Dumky Trio in the United States has special meaning. Dvořák wrote the piece before leaving for the United States and, according to the trio, performed it with colleagues in roughly 40 concerts before his departure. The title itself offers a clue to what listeners will hear. The trio connects dumky with the Czech dumat—“like think about”—and explains that the word has Ukrainian roots. That legacy is heard in the music’s characteristic movement between slower, contemplative passages and faster, more exuberant ones. Musically, they describe Dumky as “typical Dvořák in the best sense.” What stands out most is the seemingly endless flow of melody: “He puts all the beautiful melodies on into this score … almost every third bar.” The work unfolds in six movements. “The moods are changing,” they explain, with slow and fast tempos alternating through the first three movements, before the music becomes “actually quite fiery.”
The pairing with the final folk-song cycle is deliberate. Trio Bohémo says they typically pair the two pieces because Dumky “is also based on folk tunes, so it creates sort of a natural bridge to the folk song cycle.”
From Moravia: Cycle of Folk Songs, by Jan Vičar (1949 - )
This final work has an unusually personal connection to Trio Bohémo. The project began with the ensemble itself. “We wanted to bring about something which is very traditional, very Czech,” they explain, “and we couldn’t think of anything better than folk music.” There was an immediate complication: “Unfortunately none of us is a folk musician, and none of our instruments except the violin is really a traditional folk instrument.” They therefore approached Professor Jan Vičar at the Prague Academy, a lifelong collector of folk music, and asked him to arrange traditional material for piano trio. His first response was emphatic: “Absolutely not.”
“But then he slept on it and he said he would give it a try.”
The trio then made the project even less conventional by deciding to not only play the songs but to sing them as well. Getting comfortable singing onstage took some time because, as they readily admit, they are not trained singers. “We never know how the voice is going to cooperate … on the given day,” they say. “So it can go many different ways, but I think it’s always very authentic.” That unpredictability is part of the appeal. “We have great fun doing it,” and audiences get the unusual experience of “a classical music piano trio suddenly singing on the stage.”
The approximately ten-minute cycle consists of eight songs sung in an old Moravian dialect—old enough that even the musicians themselves encountered words they did not initially understand. The subjects are decidedly earthy. The musicians joke that the lyrics concern “all sorts of nice Czech behavior things, like stealing” and “running from the pub without paying. But, it’s all very happy.” The performance has one other unpredictable element: Czech or Slovak listeners sometimes recognize the songs. Trio Bohémo recalls several performances in the United States where audience members began singing along. “It might happen,” they say. “You are welcome to join in.”
SEE ALSO:
May 30: Dan Tepfer at the Piano
August 15: George Cotsirilos Quartet
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