Debussy Ravel Dukas Schoenberg Transcriptions pour trio avec piano Trio Linos - AVI8553035

With orchestral concerts on hold for the foreseeable future, the Linos Piano Trio’s Stolen Music project takes inspiration from earlier times and brings distilled versions of great orchestral works to smaller spaces. The combination of piano, violin and cello has, through the ages, acted as a (pre-digital) kind of virtuality, simulating music written for larger ensembles. This combination was chosen by Beethoven as an alternative instrumentation of his Second Symphony, allowing the work to be heard and played beyond its premiere. Throughout the 19th Century the piano trio enjoyed a second life outside the genre’s masterpieces: transcriptions of symphonic music. Its vast sound-colour possibilities conjured the richness of an orchestra, while its portability enlivened intimate salons. We have been fascinated by this aspect of the trio genre since the Linos Piano Trio’s beginning in 2007, our first performance being Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht in the arrangement by Eduard Steuermann (endorsed by the composer). Since 2016 we have taken a further step inspired by Stravinsky’s notion of creative stealing: to take something and make it one’s own. We have “stolen” works from the orchestral repertoire such as Ravel’s La Valse, and Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice and performed them widely in our own arrangements. This process is both collaborative and creative, taking weeks (and months) to get inside the score and experiment with all the possibilities. It goes beyond assigning parts to each instrument: often requiring creative solutions to achieve a specific texture, changes in figuration and ornamentation to better suit each instrument, or taking inspiration from the piano trio writing of the same composer. The result is a fully reimagined version as if the composer had conceived the piece for the piano trio. Stolen Music will be the first recording of this ongoing project, compiling the highlights from the Linos Piano Trio’s existing arrangements, paired with the inspiration for the trio’s founding: Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht.