Podium junger Solisten - Bernstein Trio
“Beginner’s Luck?”: Piano Trios by L. van Beethoven, D. Shostakovich, J. Brahms
Roman Tulchynsky (Violin), Marei Schibilsky (Cello), Julia Stephan (Piano)
“Beginner’s Luck?”: Piano Trios by L. van Beethoven (Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1 No. 1), D. Shostakovich (Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8) and J. Brahms (Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8)
Roman Tulchynsky (Violin), Marei Schibilsky (Cello) and Julia Stephan (Piano)
The Bernstein Trio was founded in 2021. The musicians Roman Tulchynsky (Violin), Marei Schibilsky (Cello), and Julia Stephan (Piano) met at the music high school “Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach” in Berlin and are now studying at the University of the Arts Berlin and the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, respectively. The ensemble is taught by Jonathan Aner.
Since 2022, the Bernstein Trio has been a member of the association “Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Berlin.” In the fall of 2022, it participated in the 67th Jeunesses Musicales Chamber Music Campus in Weikersheim, with courses taught by Valentin Erben, Heime Müller, Dirk Mommertz, and members of the Vogler Quartet. In the summer of 2023, the trio attended a masterclass in Flaine (France) and worked there with Peter Rainer and Marion Leleu. At the Rheingau Music Festival 2023, the ensemble was part of the “Classical Marathon” and received the sponsorship award from HA Hessen Agentur GmbH. In 2024, the trio was awarded a scholarship from the German Music Competition and the Friends of Young Musicians Düsseldorf Prize, and was included in the concert promotion of the German Music Competition.
The Bernstein Trio collaborates with a child psychologist from Berlin, whose pedagogically designed audiobooks for children it musically supplements.
In this program, we will encounter three brilliant composers from three different centuries, all of whom penned their first piano trios at a young age and devoted themselves to our genre in impressively original and mature ways.
We open with Beethoven’s Opus 1, No. 1, which cleverly and playfully demonstrates his compositional mastery in piano music. The three piano trios Opus 1 reveal a quite progressive Beethoven, who in his early creative phase still shows many parallels to Mozart, yet here allows typical traits of his later compositional style to peek through in theme handling and large form. Following the lively, motivically refined opening movement is a sonorous Adagio in triple meter, after which an energetic Scherzo prepares the way for the finale, which rushes mischievously and virtuoso through various keys and eventually returns to E-flat major.
Shostakovich wrote his first, unjustly relatively unknown piano trio at the age of seventeen. The single-movement piece already exhibits some signs of Shostakovich's later musical language, similar to Beethoven. Although very romantic sound worlds unfold at times, the work also provides harsh themes and a lamenting motif. Shostakovich is unmistakably recognizable as a teenager and takes us on a captivating journey in C minor.
The third piece in our collection of first piano trios is (rightly) an absolute classic:
Although Johannes Brahms, a great admirer of Beethoven, feared the comparison to “Master Ludwig” throughout his life and therefore did not dare to tackle his 1st Symphony until late, he took on the instrumentation of the piano trio very early on, just like his great idol, and wrote the first version of his Opus 8 in 1856. This early work was later revised much later, becoming the more commonly known version to this day. In our program, the late version will also be performed, showcasing both a vibrantly youthful and a masterfully matured Brahms. The self-critical composer made formal and thematic changes to his colorful youthful work, especially in the first and fourth movements, rounding it off to a monumental chamber music work. Each of the four movements opens up its own world of sound sensation and character variety, yet together they form a complete, passionate work of disarming beauty.
Beginner’s luck? No - masterful from the very beginning!
With work introduction: Background information on the piece, composer, and performers.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
