Raphael Trio

Program

The Raphael Trio celebrates a landmark 40th anniversary of performing together with a stimulating program that contrasts two trio works by Schubert with Austrian composer Rainer Bischof’s new arrangement of Arnold Schoenberg’s Kristallnachtfuge, an unfinished fugue that Schoenberg composed on the final day of Kristallnacht in 1938. The work will be given its US premiere at the Phillips.  

Program

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Notturno in E–flat Major, Op. 148, D. 897

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
Kristallnachtfuge (Fragment), arr. by Rainer Bischof

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Trio No. 2 in E–flat Major, Op. 100

About the Artists

In November of 1975 the newly-formed Raphael Trio made “a most auspicious debut” (The New York Times) at Carnegie Hall as winners of the Concert Artists Guild Award. Since then, they have been presented regularly in the leading concert halls of the United States and Europe, appearing in London, Geneva, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, Budapest, Venice, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Denver, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Chicago, Boston, and New York.  At Carnegie Hall they have been presented in cycles of concerts dedicated to the works of Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Faure, and Schumann.

The Raphael Trio is acclaimed for its creative approach to programming, including their series focusing on the works of single composers. In celebration of their 25th anniversary, they appeared in concerts throughout the US, performing the complete Beethoven trios in cycles of three concerts, including The Phillips Collection, Marlboro College, Vermont, WGBH/Boston, and in gala concerts in New York, which were broadcast by National Public Radio and WNYC and Performance Today, NPR’s live broadcast concert series.  The Trio’s performances of the complete Mozart trios have been praised at the Vienna Konzerthaus’s “Mozart Tage,” Magyar Radio’s Mozart Festival in Budapest, Duisburg’s Mozart Festival, in live recordings for National Public Radio, on tour in Holland and Austria, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In celebration of their 15th anniversary they performed a three-concert series of the late Haydn Trios at Carnegie Hall, and in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Haydns death, they repeated the series at the Phillips Collection in Washington in 2009.  Their performances of the complete Beethoven trios have been lauded in New York’s Town Hall, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, San Francisco’s Beethoven Festival, the Sheffield Festival, London’s Wigmore Hall Beethoven Festival, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

In addition to their commitment to presenting the standard repertoire as well as the lesser-known works by the great composers, the Raphael Trio maintains an active role in commissioning, performing and recording works written for them by contemporary composers. Their world premieres of works written for them include trios by Frederic Rzewski, Su-Lian Tan, Rainer Bischof, Thomas Oboe Lee, Douglas Weiland, Edward Cohen, Dina Koston, David Liptak, and, in the coming season, a new work by Marjorie Merryman.