Delta Piano Trio2017/2018

The mirror with three facesA meeting with composer Lera Auerbach

Lera Auerbach

Pianotrio Nr. 1, Op. 28 S. Prokofiev - Flute Sonata in D, Op. 94

(Transcription for piano trio by L. Auerbach)** or L. Auerbach: Cello Sonata Op. 69

-- - - - - -T'filah (Prayer) for violin solo

Piano Trio No. 2 “Triptych - The Mirror with threeFaces“

One of the most widely performed composers of the new generation, Lera Auerbach is the youngest author on the roster of Hamburg’s prestigious international musicpublishing company Hans Sikorski. Her compositions have been commissioned and performed by a wide array of artists, orchestras and ballet companies includingGidon Kremer, the Kremerata Baltica, David Finckel, Vadim Gluzman, the Tokyo and Peterson Quartet, the SWR, NDR and Royal Danish Ballet.

Lera Auerbach has appeared as solo pianist at prestigious venues as New York’s Lincoln Center, Konzerthaus Oslo, Tokyo’s Opera City and Washington’s SymphonyHall as well as Carnegie Hall in New York. She was Composer in Residence at festivals such as the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria and the Bremen Music Festival, andreceived the Hindemith Prize awarded by the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk and the Bremer Musikfest Prize.

Auerbach’s recognition is attributed not only to her musical activities but also to her writing: in 1996, she was named Poet of the Year by the International Pushkinsociety. Her works include 5 volumes of poetry and prose and numerous contributions to Russian language literary papers and magazines. Her poetry is taught inRussian schools and universities as required reading for modern literature courses.

Programme

We made our New York debut in March 2015, on a cold and snowy day. It was the kind of day where it would have probably been wiser to stay indoors. Trying to getthrough the few blocks that seperated our hotel from the venue, the slush from the salted snow turned our ‘waterproof' shoes into wet blocks of ice within a couple ofminutes. Other people were rushing home, eager to get to their warm houses as soon as possible. Our concert took place just off Broadway, in a beautiful church thatdue to the weather had been opened to homeless people for shelter and some hot drinks. We were an interesting gathering of people, all hovering around the radiatorwith our plastic cups of coffee. In the evening, during the concert, the whole city came to a standstill in one of the worst blizzards in the already impressive history ofcold New York winters. For our US debut we had chosen a programme of pieces that were especially dear to us, Beethoven’s Op. 70 Nr. 2 and Schoenberg’s VerklärteNacht and the first piano trio by Lera Auerbach. We had been especially keen to programme the latter piece because we knew Lera Auerbach lives in the City and wesecretely hoped she might be around.

We had a few extra days planned after the concert, reserved for sight-seeing, museums and visiting friends, but as you can imagine, life in the city was a bit shakendue to the extreme weather. The hotel internet didn’t work, our phones refused to connect and so there was not much else to do but practice, rehearse and eat astaggering amount of donuts in front of the only device still working: a tv with an equally staggering amount of channels. When, after a few days, things calmed downa bit and it became possible to connect again to the rest of the world, we opened Facebook to write about our experiences in this exotic town. We scrolled down theFacebook News Feed, and stumbled upon a recent post of Lera Auerbach, who had just landed in New York after a tour. We didn’t have to think twice. It was a longshot, but we wrote to her that we just performed her trio, and would absolutely love to meet her.

And she replied! We met her a couple of days later at a friend’s house in the Upper East Side. We were welcomed by her husband, who told us to wait briefly, as shewas still working on her new violin concerto with Vadim Repin, who would be giving the premiere of the concerto in the festival in Novosibirsk a couple of weeks later.So when Repin walked out of the room, it was our turn. We played through the piece once, and afterwards we worked on it for about an hour. She was the kindestperson and someone who clearly knows exactly what she wants to hear and what she had in mind when she wrote the piece. It was very interesting and inspiring tohave her show us what she meant by certain things she wrote, and extremely funny when she once remarked: ‘oh I was young then, I wouldn’t write it like this now’.Never before had we gained such insight into a piece, so able to understand what the composer meant.

Since that day we’ve stayed in touch and performed her works numerous times. It is always a pleasure to play her music, it is extremely well-received by the audienceand critics and we feel very close to her musical language. Much has been said about this new digital and globally connected era, but it surely is an astonishingexperience to be able to connect with a composer through a medium such as Facebook! This project, and the story of how we met Lera, has a special place in our livesand hearts. We look forward to continue to work with her and present her music to a wide audience.

A New York blizzard