Concluding their 2011/2012 season’s Wigmore Hall residency, the Vienna Piano Trio will perform Für Bálint András Varga (10 Miniatures for Piano Trio) by the Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud. This piece was performed as part of the ACF London's Soundings contemporary music platform in 2011. Staud’s recent commissions have included Aperion (2004/5) for the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, the cello concerto Segue (2006) premièred by Heinrich Schiff and the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, and On Comparative Meteorology (2009) for the Cleveland Orchestra. His piano trio, composed in 2007, is dedicated to one of the foremost champions of contemporary music, Bálint András Varga, whom Staud acknowledges as “my mentor and advocate, my advisor and fatherly friend”. The Vienna Piano Trio gave the world première of it in Boston in February 2010.
The programme begins with Beethoven’s Trio in G Op 1 No 2 and ends with Schubert’s in B flat D898. Of the Vienna’s recording of Beethoven trios, BBC Music Magazine commented that “these beautiful performances should revive even the most jaded listening palate”, and Richard Wigmore in the same journal said of the recordings of Schubert’s trios: “When I want to hear the B flat Trio, this fresh, intensely poetic Viennese performance will now be first off the shelves.”
The Vienna Piano Trio, comprising Wolfgang Redik (violin), Matthias Gredler (cello) and Stefan Mendl (piano), was formed in 1988 and has performed worldwide. It has been featured in such prominent festivals as the Schubertiade Schwarzenburg, the Kuhmo Festival of Chamber Music, the Mozartwoche in Salzburg and the Beethovenfest in Bonn. In addition to its Wigmore Hall concerts, the Vienna Trio will this season be making major tours of the USA, Canada and China.
