Trio Spencer: NEC Honors Ensemble

NEC: Jordan Hall | Directions

290 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA
United States

Each year, an audition committee of professional musicians and faculty selects a few exceptional student ensembles to represent the NEC Honors Ensemble Program. The ensembles work with a faculty coach and are given an opportunity to perform a spring recital in NEC's Jordan Hall.

The Trio Spencer was formed in September of 2021 at NEC. The pianist, Yandi Chen, and the violinist, Tong Chen, though unrelated, have enjoyed playing duos whilst in Shanghai due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The cellist, Jonathan Salman, originally from Seattle, joined the duo in the Fall of 2021 to form the trio.

Cumulatively, the members of the Trio Spencer have attended numerous renowned music festivals such as the Perlman Chamber Music Program, the Verbier Festival, the Four Seasons Chamber Music Winter Workshop, the Aspen Music Festival, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Fontainebleau Summer Music Program, the Virtuoso & Belcanto Festival, and the Festival de Granada.

In addition to their studies at NEC, the members of the Trio Spencer have received their music education at the Juilliard School and the Yale School of Music. Coaches and mentors of the Trio Spencer include Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, Merry Peckham, John Heiss, and Donald Weilerstein.

The Trio Spencer gets its name from Spencer, the dearest pet friend and cat of Merry Peckham, who has always been a faithful spirit support for the music students during the COVID-19 pandemic in front of the screen.

This concert will be in-person and also livestreamed.

Watch livestream from Jordan Hall

 

Artists

  1. Charles Ives | Piano Trio

    Moderato
    TSIAJ: Presto
    Moderato con moto

     

    Program note

    Ives wrote his Piano Trio mostly in 1904 but fully completed it in 1911. According to his wife, the Trio’s three movements reflect the composer’s time spent at Yale University, from which he graduated in 1898.
            The first movement consists of 27 measures of music played three times: first by cello and piano, then by violin, and finally by all three players. The movement recalls a talk given to some Yale students by an old philosophy professor. The title of the second movement, TSIAJ, stands for “This Scherzo Is AJoke,” suggesting the “games and antics by the students on a holiday afternoon.” It is a whirlwind of polytonality and musical quotation. The third movement contrasts with the second movement’s pastiche of borrowed tunes with its sweeping lyricism. Like many of Ives’s works, the Piano Trio is overly American and vivacious.

  2. Ian Wiese ’21 DMA | Fantasia for Piano Trio

     

    Program note

    Fantasia for Piano Trio is as much a response to as it is a tribute to the Fantasia in C Minor of Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. When I first heard this nebulous and rhapsodic work, C. P. E Bach's continuous flow of compositional ideas and themes captivated me. Rather than focusing on form, C. P. E Bach focused on leading one idea into another, creating a musical patchwork of themes freely rather than structurally. What was most engaging to me is that, despite the lack of structure, I never felt like the piece was through-composed or slapdash. It had its own sense of pacing and internal time/section relation that I found most pleasing. Modeling this piece after that, I sought to incorporate an expanded, more modern harmonic language that was reflective of myself with C. P. E Bach's formal relationships in mind. Fantasia for Piano Trio, in addition to winning the 2022 Honors Ensemble Competition, won the 2021 NEC Merz Trio Competition.                                                                     
    – Ian Wiese

  3. Ludwig van Beethoven | Piano Trio No. 5 in D Major, op. 70 no. 1 “Ghost”

    Allegro vivace e con brio
    Largo assai ed espressivo
    Presto

     

    Program note

    In the op. 1 trios Beethoven had already given the two string instruments more of the limelight than they had enjoyed in the keyboard-dominated trios of Mozart and Haydn. But with the op. 70 trios their emancipation is complete. The three instruments now discourse as equals in kaleidoscopically varied textures, rich in the free contrapuntal interplay that is one of the glories of the Viennese classical style.
            The opening of the first movement at once establishes the highly charged, volatile nature of a movement that trades on abrupt contrasts of texture and dynamics and, in the development, some of the composer’s most rugged, rebarbative imitative writing.
            The second movement, which spawned the work’s nickname ‘Ghost Trio’, is the the most impressionistic in all of Beethoven. The weirdly fragmented thematic material, unstable harmonies and sombre, quasi-orchestral textures, with eerie tremolos in the bowels of the keyboard, combine to produce music of extraordinary tension and Gothic gloom. And it is no surprise to discover that Beethoven noted down the brooding opening theme among sketches for the Witches’ music in a projected Macbeth opera.
            The finale restores us to a world of convivial normality, with its supple, gracious themes and crystalline textures. There is whimsical humor, too, in the main theme’s hesitations and harmonic feints, deliciously amplified in the coda.

Tags
Honors EnsemblesWatch OnlineCollegeChamber MusicViolinPianoCello