Three of the most riveting artists of their generation team up for a program showcasing two works composed only a few years apart, and a third 100 years later. Charles Ives’s only piano trio was begun six years after his graduation from Yale in 1904 and completed seven years later. With his characteristic humor, Ives quotes a number of fraternity songs, along with music originally written for the Yale Glee Club, which rejected it. Like Ives, Ravel initially took his time writing his single piano trio. The work draws from sources ranging from Basque dance to Malaysian poetry, and at the time was full of harmonic and textural innovations within a traditional structural framework. Born in New Orleans in 1980, Christopher Trapani shares both Ives’s and Ravel’s predilection for synthesizing disparate elements and musical traditions into a consonant whole. The first half of his work (Passing Through) is all about motion and change, while the second (Staying Put) evokes settling and stasis, a sense of arrival. Program:
CHRISTOPHER TRAPANI: Passing Through, Staying Put
IVES: Piano Trio, op. 86
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RAVEL: Piano Trio
The Aspen Music Festival and School presents up to 10 events a day, including performances by five orchestras, fully staged operas, chamber music, recitals, family events, master classes, panels, and lectures. Many events are free.
