Piano Trios

Axel Strauss, Jean-Michel Fonteneau, and I have decided to work together as a piano trio: the San Francisco Piano Trio. I'm REALLY excited about this development—I've always wanted to have a piano trio I could play in regularly. Axel and Jean-Michel, besides being fantastic players and insightful musicians, are also the nicest two guys in the world. We have so much fun playing music together. It's not only musically satisfying, but also personally satisfying.

We've played a couple of programs together already, but we're excited to have a week of trio immersion at BDDS! And I'm thrilled to be learning the 3rd Brahms piano trio (the one in C minor) for the first time with these guys. What a great piece—but really challenging on every level. I don't think Brahms wrote ANY music that's easy, but this one is even harder than most others. It's the last of the "official" Brahms chamber music I have to learn. I've played all the other "official" trios, the instrumental sonatas, the piano quartets, and the piano quintet. All that's left for me—after our first performance of this C minor trio—are the "unofficial" pieces: the 1st version of the B Major trio, the two string sextets that were arranged for piano trio by Brahms' friend Theodor Kirchner, and the posthumously published Trio in A major that is presumed to be by Brahms.