Trios From the City of Big Shoulders
Lincoln Trio
The twice-Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio — violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist David Cunliffe, and pianist Marta Aznavoorian — offers engaging, rarely heard piano trios by 20th-century Chicago composers Leo Sowerby, winner of the Rome Prize and Pulitzer Prize for music, and Ernst Bacon, recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships and a Pulitzer Fellowship.
Bacon’s Trio No. 2 for Violin, Cello and Piano (1987) receives its world-premiere recording. Hailed by The New York Times as “a Composer Known for Echoing America,” Bacon infuses the six-movement trio with American influences including marches, folksong-like melodies, and jazz rhythms, validating Virgil Thomson’s assessment of Bacon’s music as “full of melody and variety; honest and skillful and beautiful.”
Sowerby’s Trio for violin, violincello and pianoforte (1953) is “a work of tremendous integrity” that exhibits an “imposing structure, contrapuntal gymnastics, and a concern for instruments sounding as good as they can” (Classical Net). Sometimes virtuosic, sometimes reflective, the work is distinguished by an ever-evolving rhythmic and harmonic interplay between instruments.
Album works
Trio No. 2 for Violin, Cello and Piano, Ernst Bacon
I. Lento
II. (2nd Part) In Deliberate March Time
II. In an easy walk
III. Gravely expressive
IV. Allegro
V. Commodo
VI. Vivace, ma non presto
Trio for violin, violoncello and pianoforte (H 312), Leo Sowerby
I. Slow and Solemn
II. Quiet and serene
III. Fast; with broad sweep
Label: Cedille Records
Release date: 2021