TrioFenix has existed for seventeen years, a long time in which the musicians have given more prestige to the genre of the string trio. Violinist Shirly Laub, violist Tony Nys and cellist Karel Steylaerts have established their place among other chamber music ensembles since 2006. A string trio does not have the status of a string quartet, incidentally. TrioFenix has earned its stripes with the classical repertoire and especially also with unknown and rarely performed work for string trio.
Together with pianist Lucas Blondeel they performed a matinee concert on 10 December in the Kraakhuis of De Bijloke, under the title "Wenen aan de Leie". Lucas Blondeel introduces and connects the pieces. Mahler, Schönberg and Brahms all have a link with Vienna, since the eighteenth century the musical metropolis of Central Europe. We know Gustav Mahler from his grand symphonies and orchestral songs, but at the age of sixteen he already wrote a piano quartet. It sounds like an exercise, in which you already hear his later melancholic and bittersweet tone and genius.
Before they begin with Arnold Schönberg's string trio op. 45, Blondeel tells about this late work from 1946, in which the elderly Schönberg follows the twelve-tone method very precisely. Moreover, it is highly complex and exceedingly difficult to play. For a large part of the audience, the flawless performance is probably equally difficult to follow, not a piece you impose on yourself at home for pleasure. It therefore requires great courage and daring from TrioFenix to put this on the programme.
After the interval, Blondeel sits back at the keyboard for the well-known piano quartet in G op. 25 by Brahms, the calling card with which the young Brahms gained name and fame in Viennese musical life. After Beethoven the new king of German music, Robert Schumann praised him. Conceived on a grand scale as a symphony, motifs and themes continuously interwoven, angular and rhythmic passages alternated with lyrical phrases, one of Brahms' first masterpieces. It sounded masterful in the kraakhuis. Just as in the Mahler and Schönberg, TrioFenix played precisely, flawlessly and impeccably. But still, here and there it could perhaps have been a bit more ungainly, a bit more passion and volume for the romantic force of the young Brahms.
- WHAT: Wenen aan de Leie
- WHO: TrioFenix & Lucas Blondeel
- WHERE & WHEN: De Bijloke 10 December 2023