Rosch Musical Arts Series opens with The Verdehr Trio

Sunday, October 11, 2009
4:00pm
Rosch Recital Hall – SUNY Fredonia
Tickets: $18 general / $10 students
SUNY Fredonia Ticket Office: 716-673-3501
Buy Tickets Online: www.fredonia.edu/tickets

Verdehr Trio (l to r: Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, Walter Verdehr, Silvia Roederer)

The SUNY Fredonia School of Music kicks off the 2009-2010 Rosch Musical Arts Series with an afternoon performance by internationally renowned Verdehr Trio.

An acknowledged leader in the field of new music, the Verdehr Trio for over thirty years has concentrated on molding and defining the personality of the violin-clarinet-piano trio. This unique and dynamic ensemble, with members Walter Verdehr (violin), Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr (clarinet) and Silvia Roederer (piano), will perform an eclectic mix of old and new. Members of the ensemble will talk about each piece from stage, creating an open and warm atmosphere in the concert hall. The audience will have an opportunity to talk one-on-one with the performers at a Meet & Greet immediately after the concert in the lobby of Rosch Recital Hall.

The first half of the program features melodic works by two giants of 19th century romantic composers, Edvard Grieg and Hector Berlioz. The program is rounded out with a variety of 20th-21th century works. Verdehr’s clarinetist, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, described a few works on the program:
“Sketch Book by Hollywood composer Gernot Wolfgang is a delightful mixture of Irish music and jazz idioms with a seductive blues-like second movement. The final work, Suite by Alexander Arutiunian, harkens back to the 19th century -- a large-scale romantic work with Armenian nationalistic melodies and themes. Roberto Sierra' s Remembrance is an exciting and contemplative study of an elusive but lovely theme which appears in fragments throughout the work in many different guises.”

The Trio has over the years created a large repertoire by commissioning over 200 new works from some of the world's most prominent and exciting composers--known and unknown, young and old, from this country and abroad. These efforts are entitled The Making of a Medium because, in a real sense, this is what has happened over the years.

“In addition to being a superb chamber music ensemble,” said SUNY Fredonia clarinet professor Andrew Seigel, “the Verdehr Trio is one this country’s foremost cultural ambassadors, traveling around the world presenting new music. They have literally created a genre of chamber music, taking the less than 10 trios that existed before them and turning that into a body of more than 240 works over the course of their careers. Musicians and scholars will be referring to them and performing these commissioned works for generations to come.”

The Verdehr Trio has performed throughout the world: in seventeen European countries, the former Soviet Union, in South and Central America as well as in Asia, Australia and in almost all of the United States. Among major concert halls where the Trio has appeared are Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Library of Congress, Vienna's Brahmssaal, Sydney Opera House, London's Wigmore Hall, Auditorio de Madrid, Dvorak Hall in Prague, IRCAM Centre in Paris and Leningrad's Philharmonic Chamber Hall. The Trio has also played at various international festivals--the Spoleto Festival, Prague Spring Festival, the Vienna Spring Festival, Warsaw Autumn, the Grand Teton Music Festival and at numerous international clarinet festivals. Recently the Trio received a Creative Programming Award from Chamber Music America. The Verdehr Trio is in residence at Michigan State University. An article about the Trio appears in the new Groves Dictionary of Music and the Trio won an Adventuresome Programming Award from ASCAP and Chamber Music America.

The Verdehr Trio is part of the SUNY Fredonia School of Music’s 2009-2010 Rosch Musical Arts Series, committed to presenting world-class artists in the beautiful, intimate and acoustically superb Rosch Recital Hall. In additional to the concert, members of the trio will give master classes for SUNY Fredonia music students as part of their residency on campus. This event is sponsored in part by the Faculty Student Association of the State University of New York at Fredonia.

For a complete listing of upcoming events, visit www.fredonia.edu/music
To buy tickets: www.fredonia.edu/tickets or call 716-673-3501