The Clavier Trio will present Sorceries for Three at the UT Dallas Conference Center at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 8. The concert will feature the world premiere of Sor(tri)lège by Robert Xavier Rodríguez.
Composer Robert Xavier Rodríguez holds the endowed chair of University Professor of Music in the School of Arts and Humanities at UT Dallas. Reforma, Mexico’s leading newspaper recently named him the “2007 Composer of the Year.” Sor(tri)lège was commissioned by the School of Arts and Humanities for the Clavier Trio.
Rodríguez explains, “The title Sor(tri)lège combines the French word for sorcery, sortilège, with the number three to create a fanciful new word meaning ‘Sorcery for Three,’ or, literally, ‘Sorcer(three).’ The colorful aura of magic is an important element in the music, even from the very first notes: a mysterious descending three-fold phrase to represent three sweeps of a sorcerer’s wand.”
The Clavier Trio includes Arkady Fomin, a Dallas Symphony Orchestra violinist, artistic director of the New Conservatory of Dallas and the conservatory director for Music in the Mountains in Durango, Colo.; pianist David Korevaar, a faculty member of the University of Colorado, Boulder; and cellist Jesus Castro-Balbi, a faculty member of Texas Christian University.
The concert will alsoinclude Franz Joseph Haydn’s Trio in E (Hob. XV: 28) and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, Op. 97 in B-flat. The concert is a preview of the Clavier Trio’s upcoming performance at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on Sunday, Feb. 10.
During one of Franz Joseph Haydn’s tours of England, a critic remarked, “It is no wonder that to souls capable of being touched by music, Haydn should be an object of homage, and even of idolatry; for like our own Shakespeare, he moves and governs the passions at his will.” Pianist and author Charles Rosen has declared Haydn’s piano trios to be among “the most brilliant piano works before Beethoven.”
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, Op. 97 in B-flat was dedicated to his student Archduke Rudolph Von Habsburg-Lothringen of Austria. According to Richard Freed, program annotator at the Kennedy Center, Beethoven “achieved a ‘concertante’ style of unprecedented brilliance and power that was to set the standards for the flowering of the genre throughout the 19th century.” Freed claims the Archduke Trio is “the crowning masterpiece of Beethoven’s cycle of piano trios” and “the greatest of all works for this combination of instruments.”
More information about the concert is available at http://ah.utdallas.edu/season0708/claviertrio.htm.
Tickets for the concert are $20 for general admission and free at the door to UT Dallas students with valid Comet Cards. UT Dallas ticket office hours are from 2 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and at the door one hour before concert time. For advance ticket purchases using Visa, MasterCard or Discover, please call 972-883-2552.
For information about the many musical, arts, theatre, dance and other performances and exhibitions held throughout the year at UT Dallas, please call 972-UTD-ARTS (972-883-2787) or e-mail utdarts@utdallas.edu. People with disabilities in need of special accommodations may call 972-883-2982, Texas Relay Operator: 1-800-RELAYVV.