STOLEN MUSIC by Linos Piano Trio
Idea •
With orchestral concerts on hold for the foreseeable future, the Linos Piano Trio’s Stolen Music project takes inspiration from earlier times and brings distilled versions of great orchestral works to smaller spaces.
Inspiration • The combination of piano, violin and cello has, through the ages, acted as a (pre-digital) kind of virtuality, simulating music written for larger ensembles. This combination was chosen by Beethoven as an alternative instrumentation of his Second Symphony, allowing the work to be heard and played beyond its premiere.
Throughout the 19th Century the piano trio enjoyed a second life outside the genre’s masterpieces: transcriptions of symphonic music. Its vast sound-colour possibilities conjured the richness of an orchestra, while its portability enlivened intimate salons.
Process •
We have been fascinated by this aspect of the trio genre since the Linos Piano Trio’s beginning in 2007, our first performance being Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht in the arrangement by Eduard Steuermann (endorsed by the composer).
Since 2016 we have taken a further step inspired by Stravinsky’s notion of creative stealing: to take something and make it one’s own. We have “stolen” works from the orchestral repertoire such as Ravel’s La Valse, and Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice and performed them widely in our own arrangements.
This process is both collaborative and creative, taking weeks (and months) to get inside the score and experiment with all the possibilities. It goes beyond assigning parts to each instrument: often requiring creative solutions to achieve a specific texture, changes in figuration and ornamentation to better suit each instrument, or taking inspiration from the piano trio writing of the same composer.
The result is a fully reimagined version as if the composer had conceived the piece for the piano trio.
STOLEN MUSIC will be the first recording of this ongoing project, compiling the highlights from the Linos Piano Trio’s existing arrangements, paired with the inspiration for the trio’s founding: Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht.
The Linos Piano Trio brings together the members’ five nationalities and three musical voices into
their single artistic vision, which pushes at the boundaries of the trio genre: championing hidden
gems and creating new trio transcriptions alongside the great works of the trio repertoire.
Praised for its “slow-burning, gripping performance” (The Strad), and “virtuosity, presence of mind,
and wit” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), the Linos Piano Trio’s reputation has taken it to prestigious stages
and festivals internationally. The trio’s first two recordings both received nominations for OPUS
Klassik and several five-star reviews from across the European press.
The latter, Stolen Music (BR& CAvi-music), won a Best-List award for chamber music at the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik 2022.
Among other prizes and affiliations, the Linos Piano Trio was the 1st Prize and Audience Prize winner
of the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition 2015 and since 2017 holds the position
of Carne Ensemble-in-Residence at Trinity Laban Conservatoire.
Linos (Λῖνος), in Greek mythology, was a son of Apollo. He received from his father the three-stringed
lute, and became known as the inventor of new melodies, lyric songs, and eloquent speech. He was
the teacher of Heracles and his brother Orpheus.
Thai-British musician Prach Boondiskulchok
enjoys a diverse career as a pianist, historical keyboardist, and composer. He studied piano and composition at the Guildhall School as a Princess Galyani Vadhana Scholar. He is a founding member of the Linos Piano Trio.
Beyond his ensemble, Prach collaborates widely including recitals with Roger Chase, Steven Isserlis, Leonid Gorokhov.
His compositions include Night Suite (2014) praised by George Benjamin for its “ingenuity and imagination,”
Ritus (2019) for Endellion String Quartet’s 40th Anniversary, and Ligatures (2021) for IMS Prussia Cove. A committed educator and scholar, Prach currently teaches chamber music at Royal College of Music London, is a Researcher of historical keyboards at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent.
Praised for his “perfectly poised“ (The Strad) music-making and “beautiful tone, articulated like speech“
(Klassikfavori), London-born German-Brazilian violinist Konrad Elias-Trostmann’s vivid performance
style and natural flair for entertaining break down the wall often found between audience and performer.
Chamber music performances have brought him to venues from New York to São Paulo, and Konrad
regularly appears in world-renowned orchestras such as the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.
Currently based in Cologne, he enjoys a vibrant social life in whichever city he happens to be, and gathering
inspiration from some of his greatest musical influences such as Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton.
Berlin-based French-born multi-faceted musician Vladimir Waltham is equally at home on Cello,
Baroque Cello, and all sizes of da Gamba instruments. Praised for his “luminous tone” by Gramophone,
Vladimir is passionate about sharing the broadest possible musical palette, in repertoire
spanning from the Middle Ages to collaborations with composers and world premieres as well as
everything in between.
Vladimir has performed in concert halls all around the world with his ensembles
the Linos Piano Trio and La Serenissima, but also regularly appears as a guest soloist and
chamber musician in halls and festivals worldwide.
Claude Debussy was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with impressionist music, though Debussy disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed.
Debussy's music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of non-traditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant
Among his most famous works are his Clair de Lune, his Three Nocturnes and his orchestral piece La Mer.
Arnold Schoenberg was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, but perhaps also one of the least listened to. Strikingly, Schoenberg was self-educated, even though his music is imbedded in complex music theory. It was Schoenberg who definitely departed from tonality and he developed the twelve tone technique. In this composition style, one has to use every twelve tones of the scale, before one can be repeated. The struggle to adhere to this dogma is clearly audible: his music is tense, hectic and particularly acute - and therefore at times not that accesible to occasional listeners.
Nevertheless, his music and his liberation of tonality had an enormous impact on all composers that came after him. Together with the music of his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern, his style is often referred to as the Second Viennese School, parallel to the First Viennese School of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, who, in a similar vein, changed the history of music for good.
His most performed works are his string sextet Verklärte Nacht, his five Orchestra pieces op. 16, and his opera Moses und Aron. The development of Schoenberg's music can be heard in his Five String Quartets in particular.
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