Mirrors
First Hand Records (2021)
“Mirrors is a diverse and strikingly inventive collection of 21st-century American works by the impressively dedicated Lysander Trio....The meticulous recording also benefits from crystal clear sound.”
World Premiere Recordings by American Composers
Jakub Ciupinski, Jennifer Higdon, Reinaldo Moya, William David Cooper, Gilad Cohen, and Sofia Belimova
mirrors celebrates the trio’s tenth anniversary with six world premiere recordings of 21st century American piano trios. Four of the trios, by Jakub Ciupinski, Reinaldo Moya, Gilad Cohen, and, Sofia Belimova, were commissioned by and written specifically for the Lysander, while the works by Jennifer Higdon and William David Cooper were premiered by members of the ensemble.
Over the past decade, the Lysander Piano Trio has shown a strong commitment to working with living composers and building new repertoire for the piano trio, yielding a great variety of musical styles from artists of multiple generations, diverse international backgrounds – Moya is Venezulean-American, Ciupinski is Polish-American, Belimova is Russian-American and Cohen is Israeli-American – and a broad range of interests. All of the compositions featured on mirrors are inspired by other art forms such as theatre, literature, and visual arts.
The trio is joined by acclaimed soprano Sarah Shafer on Higdon’s evocative song cycle, Love Sweet, a piece that expands the sparse repertoire for voice and piano trio. The trio regards Shafer – who has performed with The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Glyndebourne, San Diego Opera, Tulsa Opera, and Opera Philadelphia – as a foremost chamber music and song interpreter of her generation. She frequently performs with pianist Richard Goode, who was an early mentor to her.
Of the album, the trio states, “2020 has presented many unexpected challenges, making an in-person celebration of our ensemble’s anniversary, not to mention the usual collaborations in which we engage, nearly impossible. Under these circumstances, we are particularly grateful to be able to share the fruits of some of our most meaningful collaborations in the form of this album. We believe that the works included on this album, in their richness of styles and origins, provide an exciting and optimistic glimpse into music being written for piano trio today.”
“In spite of contemporary chamber music’s inclination for unusual instrumentation, [the traditional piano trio] has continued to flourish – in part thanks to the work of the Lysander Piano Trio, which has promoted and premiered several major works... Shafer’s lyric soprano suits the wistful melodies [of Jennifer Higdon's "Love Sweet"]; the addition of cello and violin to the usual voice-and-piano art song is highly evocative.” –BBC Music Magazine
“All six of this release’s compositions benefit from the Lysander Trio’s finely honed ensemble values and well-characterised solo contributions.” –Gramophone
“The formidable Lysander Piano Trio celebrates its ten-year anniversary with an attractive new disc, featuring music hot-off-the-press by living American composers. The trio is fervently committed to new music and to the commissioning thereof: no less than six world-premiere recordings populate this disc. Ne’er to shy away from muscular playing and athletic feats of prowess, the members of Lysander crack on through these works (generally having been constructed with their triply impressive strengths in mind).” –The Whole Note
“Each shade and flicker is precisely registered by both musicians and engineers.” –The Strad
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In The Black Mirror (2013-2014), Jakub Ciupinski takes inspiration from a technique in the visual arts, where the painter looks at a vast landscape through a compact mirror with a blackened surface and slightly convex shape. Also known as a “Claude glass,” named after 17th-century landscape painter Claude Lorrain, the mirror can capture vast landscapes into a size of a small canvas while reducing the tonal range of the reflected scenery. Ciupinski reflects this musically through minimalism, and describes his work as "a small study of time, painted in dim colors.” *The Black Mirror was released as a digital single on November 13 and is available for listening on all major streaming platforms.
Jennifer Higdon’s Love Sweet (2014) for soprano and piano trio is a set of five songs on love poems by the American poet, Amy Lowell (1874–1925) from her collections Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds (1914) and A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912). Jennifer Higdon writes, “The layout of the poetry reflects the trajectory of a relationship: from birth to death.” This world premiere recording celebrates a long and fruitful collaboration between the trio and Higdon. Notably, Zorman and Stepanova worked closely with her for the world premiere performance of Love Sweet at SongFest in 2014 (with a different cellist and soprano) and Higdon invited the trio in its current configuration to perform her Piano Trio at a special concert at National Sawdust honoring Joan Tower and featuring other distinguished women composers.
Venezuelan-American composer Reinaldo Moya’s Ghostwritten Variations (2015–2016) reflect Moya’s deep interest in literature. Moya takes his inspiration from four novels that feature composers as protagonists, and this trio is a reimagining of what the music of those fictional composers might sound like.
Variation 1. Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus – Adrian Leverkühn
Variation 2. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas – Robert Frobisher
Variation 3. Richard Powers: Orfeo – Peter Els
Variation 4. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Memory of Whiteness – Johannes Wright and The OrchestraWilliam David Cooper’s An den Wassern zu Babel (2010) is a set of variations inspired by Psalm 137, By the Rivers of Babylon. Cooper’s atonal harmonic language is highly expressive, evoking the sounds of early 20th-century German expressionism.
Gilad Cohen’s Around the Cauldron (2016), co-commissioned by Concert Artists Guild and premiered at Weill Recital Hall in 2017 was inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is influenced by popular music styles including psychedelic rock, grunge, and musical theater. It comprises seven short scenes, each of which evokes a mood that resonates with an image of three witches gathered around a cauldron in a dark forest, muttering spells and adding selected creatures to a bubbling stew.
Sofia Belimova’s Titania and Her Suite (2014) also draws upon Shakespeare, by way of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the fact that the Lysander Piano Trio is named after a character in the play, whose famous line, “The course of true love never did run smooth,” can be applied to the work of chamber ensembles. Just 13-years-old when she wrote this piece, Belimova was one of four young composers in the ComposerCraft program at New York City’s Kaufman Music Center (KMC) who were commissioned to write works to be premiered on the Lysander’s debut recital at KMC in 2014.
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Praised by The New York Times for her “luminous voice” and “intensely expressive interpretations,” and named “remarkable, artistically mature” and “a singer to watch” by Opera News, American soprano Sarah Shafer performs with numerous opera companies including The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Glyndebourne, San Diego Opera, Tulsa Opera, and Opera Philadelphia. Equally at home in standard and contemporary repertoire, she has created leading roles in world premiere productions with San Francisco Opera, and premiered works by renowned composers Richard Danielpour, John Harbison, and Poul Ruders. She has appeared with many orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Mexico, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician and recitalist, she regularly collaborates with pianist Richard Goode, and is sought after at chamber music societies throughout the United States. She spent five summers as a resident artist at the Marlboro Music Festival. Recordings include the premiere of Richard Danielpour’s chamber work, Talking to Aphrodit and Poul Ruder’s opera The Thirteenth Child. www.sarahshafersoprano.com.