June in Buffalo - University at Buffalo (June 2023)
Buffalo, New York, USA
Presented by the UB Department of Music and The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, June in Buffalo, is a festival and conference dedicated to contemporary composers. June in Buffalo offers an intensive schedule of seminars, lectures, workshops, professional presentations, participant forums and open rehearsals, as well as afternoon and evening concerts open to the general public and critics. Each of the invited composers will have one of his/her pieces performed during the festival. Evening performances feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music.
Piano Trio No.1 World Premiere
I wasn’t able to attend the premiere of my first piano trio due to an enormous gap in geography, but some audience members took it upon themselves to write to me and let me know about their experience at the concert. One such individual was Bob Leschen who wrote this short article of what transpired that evening!
Thank you, Bob!
Australian composer Micheal Grebla’s new Piano Trio No. 1 “In Search of Peace,” was given its Australian premiere on Saturday 11th December, 2021 in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick at the Tempo Rubato theatre. Before a sell-out crowd of over one hundred, this attractive music was greeted with sustained applause and enthusiastic hooting.
Piano Trio No. 1 “In Search of Peace” sat comfortably within a well selected program consisting of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op 8, Arvo Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio, and Robert Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 2, Op 80. Melbourne Chamber Players, Natalia Harvey, violin, Anna Pokorny, cello, and Aidan Boase, piano, played the program with enthusiastic commitment and skill which appealed greatly to the appreciative audience. Interestingly like Michael, Anna and Aidan, and your reporter, all originally came from Western Australia. I am indebted to Aidan for offering the following comments on the content of Michael’s composition and Georgina for the photo and describing Michael’s music as “monumentally beautiful”.
Michael Grebla’s first piano trio is a powerful emotional journey. After a sweet and vulnerable opening from muted strings, the piano enters with the main theme of this work, a beautiful, searching chord progression – very soft and deeply resonant. The work returns to this theme twice more later, amidst episodes of immensely varied character and energy. Michael builds the intensity slowly at first, then there are sweeping lyrical passages, wild gypsy-like sections, frantic and breathless passages. The music dissolves back into stillness and tranquillity for the opening theme again. The next section has a kind of inevitable momentum, music that picks you up and sweeps you along, and soon everything is fiery and intense, and this time it doesn’t dissolve back into the opening theme, but crescendos into it for the final hearing, thunderous and resolute with massive piano chords and soaring string harmonics. It’s a triumphant return, but the last few bars seem to leave us with a question – how long will the peace last?
I’m a huge fan of Michael’s music and feel so happy to have been able to perform some of it at last. We cannot thank Michael enough for writing this wonderful piece of music, and can’t wait to perform it again and record it!
Bob Leschen
Melbourne Chamber Players: Intimate Expressions
Intimate and moody, Shostakovich's powerful Piano Trio No. 1 begins an evening of music from prodigious imaginations. This youthful work reveals a vulnerable romantic, an innate melodist full of hope and passion. A gripping premiere follows by New York-based Australian composer Michael Grebla, whose music is captivating, introspective and above all, human. Arvo Pärt's stunning and serene retelling of Mozart's Adagio from Sonata in F Major, K. 280 suspends time before Robert Schumann's effervescent Piano Trio No. 2 uplifts in an elegant finale full of warmth and optimism.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Piano Trio No .1 in C minor, Op. 8
Michael Grebla
New Work*
Arvo Pärt
Mozart-Adagio
Robert Schumann
Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 80
I. Sehr lebhaft
II. Mit innigem Ausdruck - Lebhaft
III. In mässiger Bewegung
IV. Nicht zu rasch