Merz Trio Performs Schumann and Brahms

Hailed as “entrancing” (BBC Music Magazine) the Merz Trio opens the 2024/25 Newport Classical Chamber Series searching for song in night’s darknesses. Beginning with the 12th-century chants spun by Hildegard von Bingen in her solitary monastic cell, the piano trio explores melody sung into and for the night, weaving together a musical conversation that joins the voices of Purcell, Schumann, Alma Mahler, Brahms and Zemlinsky in works large and small, and brings us right into the twentieth century with Thelonious Monk’s poignantly lonely ode to a dark hour, ‘Round Midnight.

Program
Von Bingen Hymn O ignee spiritus
Schumann Six Studies in Canonic Form, Op. 56, III. Andantino
Monk ’Round Midnight
Purcell Hush No More
Alma Mahler Laue Sommernacht
Zemlinsky Empfängnis
Schumann Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major, Op. 80
Brahms Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8

* Program subject to change