Trio Con Brio Copenhagen

Will Cast Their Spell On Newtown

“They cast a spell over the audience … so alive, so musical … ravishing from the very first chord … absolute, dynamically sumptuous authority…” such are some of the rave reviews one reads in the world press about the rising and internationally acclaimed Trio Con Brio Copenhagen. The young musicians will perform their magic at the second concert of Newtown Friends of Music’s 2008-09 season on Sunday, November 2, at 3 pm. The performance will be in the theater of Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street.

A combination of two Korean sisters and one Danish pianist, whose careers somehow merged and meshed in Vienna, Austria, Trio con Brio Copenhagen first drew attention with a sensational performance that took the highest prize at Germany’s prestigious ARD-Munich Competition in 2002. Since then, they have won first prize in several more competitions including Italy’s Premio Vittorio Gui (Florence), Norway’s Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, and the Danish Radio Competition.

More recently, this leading young Scandinavian chamber ensemble was the recipient of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award in 2005. This biennial award, one of the most coveted in the world of chamber music, honors in perpetuity the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio by encouraging and enhancing the career of an extraordinarily accomplished “rising” piano trio. The prize carries with it appearances on twenty major concert series across the USA; Trio con Brio Copenhagen was chosen by members of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio as well as the eminent musicians Claude Frank (pianist), Michael Tree (violist of the Guarneri Quartet), and Peter Wiley (former cellist of the Beaux Arts Trio).

The international artists will present a Newtown audience with a well balanced concert program on November 2, starting with Joseph Haydn’s lyrical and colorful Trio in G Major. The emotional and awe-inspiring Trio No. 2 in E minor, Opus 67 by Dmitri Shostakovich will follow.

After intermission, the second half of the concert will be entirely devoted to the expressively beautiful Trio in G Major, opus 15, which Bedrich Smetana wrote after the death of his five year old daughter. From the orderly perfection of Haydn to the emotional passion of the last two works, Trio Con Brio will be able to demonstrate their versatility and intensity of expression, as illustrated in this review by the Rocky Mountain News in April 2008, of the Shostakovich: “The E-minor Trio carried listeners through a variety of emotional twists and turns, making its final muted statement with an understated power so riveting, that, for a long stretch, no one in the audience dared break the mood with applause.”

Tickets for the November 2 concert are $18 for adults and $16 for seniors.  Students in grades K through 12 are admitted free with a ticket-holding adult.

The box office will open one hour before the start of the concert. Parking is free behind Edmond Town Hall and the facility is handicap accessible with all seating providing excellent viewing and acoustics. An informal reception following the concert will offer concert goers the opportunity to mingle with the artists.

For additional information about this concert as well as the others coming up this season, write to Newtown Friends of Music, PO Box 295, Newtown CT )6470-0295, visit NewtownFriendsOfMusic.org or call 426-6470.