Trio No.3 for violin, cello and piano Op.122 (2012) c.23'00"

Commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, sponsored by Joyce and David Cornell

First performed on January 23rd, 2013 at the Leo Rich Theatre in Tucson, Arizona by Trio Solisti (Maria Bachmann, violin; Pia Gerlach, cello; and Jon Klibonoff, piano)

ORDER SCORE AND PARTS FROM THEODORE PRESSER COMPANY

ABOUT

My Piano Trio No.3 Op.122, commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and sponsored by Joyce and David Cornell, was completed in the fall of 2012. All three trios were, coincidentally, written at intervals of 11 years: opus 32 in 1990 and opus 77 in 2001. Like my first two pianos trios this work is in one movement.  The Third Trio unfolds in three clearly discernable sections.  Its opening introduction features two cadenzas, one for violin followed by one for cello, which are heard over repeated pianissimo chords in the piano and which serve to introduce the work’s motivic material. The broadly lyric section that follows features long lines in the strings over a glittering ostinato in the piano. The final section of the Trio is a menacing and somewhat jazzy processional which bears the subtitle (They’re coming…..) in the printed score. The entire Trio was written during a year notable for events which revealed some of the most disturbing aspects of American culture: events ranging from multiple public shootings to the hate-filled rhetoric leading up to the 2012 election. For me, the viewing of almost any news media these days seems to inspire an encroaching sense of paranoia and despair.  I think some of this feeling crept into the work’s final section, which has an undercurrent of pessimistic sarcasm running throughout.  The Trio culminates in a climax which seems to be a musical embodiment of the triumph of banality, before it all comes crashing down in an abrupt ending. Individual audience members are invited to imagine a bogeyman of their own choosing to serve as the object of paranoia represented in this closing section.

RECORDINGS

REVIEWS

“…exceptionally well-crafted…you cannot help but wonder why Liebermann’s music isn’t heard more often…”
TheaterJones