NZTrio’s 2020 concert series takes us on an inspiring exploration of ancestry, diversity and heritage. Each concert opens with a powerful masterwork from Beethoven marking the year of his 250th birthday, before swerving off into an exotic kaleidoscope of geographical, cultural and religious influences.
After starting at home with the introspective Origins, the series travels ever-outward into the rich, culturally diverse combinations of InterFusions and finally into the spectral clusters of the cosmos in Constellations.
In this third and final episode of the series, and approaching the date of Beethoven’s 250th birthday, we open the concert where it all began: his seminal Opus 1 No 1. Then our focus branches out to the Finnish-German-French influence in Kaija Saariaho’s spectral masterpiece Light and Matter. Staying in the brightest light, we experience the delightful return of the prizewinning Lightbox by New Zealander Karlo Margetić. The light then projects onto the silver screen in the Piano Trio by Erich Korngold, a work that bears all the hallmarks of his Austro-Hungarian upbringing, WW2-era immigration into America, and film-music career.
Amalia Hall – Violin
Ashley Brown – Cello
Somi Kim – Piano