Trios in Contrast - The Jacaranda Trio performs music from Vienna, Russia, and Spain

On Sunday, February 23rd, at 3 PM we welcome to Northwards House the celebrated Jacaranda Trio, featuring musicians Johanna Roos (violin), Jessica Bailey (cello), and Albie van Schalkwyk (piano).

They will be presenting a recital entitled Trios in Contrast, featuring works by Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Turina, amongst others.

The Programme Highlights

In 1791, the young Ludwig van Beethoven started work on a set of three piano trios which would be completed in Vienna the following year, designated as his Opus 1.

Whilst by no means his first composition, the composer drew a clear distinction between earlier juvenile works and a growing maturity in his compositional style – these elaborate four-movement works are almost symphonic in scale when compared to the much more intimate chamber works of his counterparts, Mozart and Haydn. Taking on the piano part himself at the set’s premiere at the Viennese residence of Prince Karl Lichnowsky (the dedicatee) in 1794, Beethoven was firmly established as a promising composer and pianist. The third trio of the set, in C minor – what would become the composer’s most characteristic key – is filled with great emotional depth and musical contrast.

During a trip to a sanatorium to recover from tuberculosis, a youthful sixteen-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich fell in love with Tatyana Glivenko. Upon his return to university, he composed a single-movement piano trio, originally entitled “Poème”, with her as the dedicatee. Not published during the composer’s lifetime, its final version was assembled from numerous manuscripts, with a student of the composer, Boris Tishchenko, having completed the last bars of the piano part. This early work, cleverly constructed with great emotional depth, is rhapsodic in nature.

With the assistance of the great Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, a young Joaquín Turina was able to study in Paris, where the music of Ravel, Debussy, and Fauré made an undeniable impact. Turina composed a wealth of chamber works including string quartets, piano quintets and a sextet, with the lively second piano trio harking back to the three movement-form of Mozart and Haydn’s earlier piano trios. Although the work is distinctively Spanish in its musical language, there are clear references to the composer’s French contemporaries whose music so inspired him during his studies.

Meet the Performers

Johanna Roos is an inspirational violinist, chamber musician and influential teacher.

New to the Western Cape, she enjoys a private teaching studio in Stellenbosch and collaborates with local artists, coaching at the Franschhoek Chamber Music Workshop, performing at the Franschhoek Chamber Music Festival, for the Cape Chamber Collective, and Val de Vie Classics.

Jessica Bailey studied cello with Betty Pack from the age of seven and continued her studies in Geneva with Pierre Fournier, and Joan Dickson at the Royal College of Music in London. A current member of Ensemble Strelitzia, and previously also of the string quartet Evolution of 4, Jessica resides in Cape Town where she continues to perform in chamber music recitals.

Albie van Schalkwyk is widely recognised as one of the leading South African chamber musicians and vocal accompanists. Having continued his studies in London with Geoffrey Parsons, Gwenneth Pryor, and Martino Tirimo, Albie returned to South Africa to take up the position as Official Accompanist and Producer at the SABC in Cape Town.

In 2009, he was appointed Associate Professor in Piano and Chamber Music at the South African College of Music, UCT.