Diane Walsh, piano

Hiroko Yajima, violin

Melissa Meell, cello

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The Mannes Trio, winner of the 1986 Naumburg Chamber Music Award, made its official New York debut in March of 1985 at the 92nd Street Y. The Trio's excellence brought them recognition from audiences and critics alike.

The Mannes Trio gave an annual series of concerts at the Mannes College of Music in New York, where it was in residence from 1983-1994. The group appeared in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington, DC, Miami, Los Angeles and Vancouver, performed live on WQXR-FM in New York, and as soloists in Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Williamsport (PA) Symphony.

The Naumburg Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts made it possible for them to commission a new work from the Franco-American composer Betsy Jolas, Trio, which received its world premiere at Lincoln Center on June 26, 1989.

The Trio also commissioned and premiered Sirens, from John Anthony Lennon. They subsequently toured throughout the United States for several seasons under the auspices of Columbia Artists and Community Concerts.

Program note for Betsy Jolas's Trio

"In Trio, Betsy Jolas explores the classic piano-trio medium as a theater of voices. Each instrument retains a clear identity—violin and cello often articulate supple, speech-inflected lines while the piano anchors, comments, or suddenly joins the discourse—yet none dominates for long. The piece proceeds not by classical exposition and recapitulation but by a mosaic of linked episodes. Brief, germinal motives surface, vanish, and return altered in contour, register, or instrumentation, creating a sense of memory in motion.

Jolas’s ear for color shapes the drama. String harmonics and delicate pizzicati hover at the edges of melody; the piano’s resonance—sometimes percussive, sometimes veiled—casts the harmony in shifting light. Silence is used structurally, opening spaces in which the music can pivot to a new perspective. Lyrical spans grow from the texture almost organically, as if discovered rather than imposed, and quick, bright passages provide kinetic contrast.

Written for the Mannes Trio and premiered at Lincoln Center on June 26, 1989, the work reflects Jolas’s longstanding interest in musical “speech”: phrases breathe, hesitate, and re-gather, inviting players and listeners into an attentive conversation. What emerges is chamber music of refinement and alert responsiveness, where balance, color, and nuance are paramount."

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Naumburg Concert, April 8, 1987, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center

The Mannes Trio -- Diane Walsh, piano; Hiroko Yajima, violin; Melissa Meell, cello

Program

Haydn: Trio in A Major

Artur Schnabel: Trio (1945)

Brahms: Trio in B Major, Op. 8

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