Prometheus Trio Opens Season With Reunion and Piano Masterworks

Stefanie Jacob (left) and Scott Tisdel (right).

The Prometheus Trio’s season-opening concert on Monday, Oct. 5 is a reunion for pianist Stefanie Jacob, cellist Scott Tisdel, and guest violinist Margot Schwartz. Schwartz played with the Trio from 2015 until 2023 while a violinist with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. She recently completed a master’s degree in liberal arts at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, and is now playing with ensembles in both Santa Fe and Milwaukee.

Prometheus will perform three piano trios, each written by composers at different stages of life.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was raised in Vienna. Composing by the age of 3 and recognized early by Gustav Mahler as a musical prodigy, Korngold was just 13 when his Op. 1 Piano Trio was premiered in Munich and New York. Richard Strauss called the young composer a genius: “This assurance of style, this mastery of form, this characteristic expressiveness, this bold harmony are truly astonishing!”

“Strauss’ affinity for Korngold’s music is not too surprising: Much of the trio sounds quite a lot like early Strauss, with sweeping themes, colorful harmonies and incredible numbers of notes for all instruments,” Jacob said. “Yet it does not sound like a pale imitation of another composer: Korngold’s voice is an unmistakably individual one.”

Korngold eventually wrote for strings, piano, opera, ballet and orchestra. After relocating from Nazi-occupied Austria to the United States in 1938, he had great success composing music for feature films, winning two Oscars.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was in his 30s when he composed piano trios in F major and G minor in 1847. Prometheus will perform his Trio in F Major, Op. 80. It had been five years since he had written any chamber music. British music writer Misha Donat suggested that “two external stimuli may have prompted him to return to chamber music…. One stimulus was the fact that Clara Schumann had recently completed her Piano Trio in G minor, the other, the intense contrapuntal studies which she and her husband had carried out in 1845.”

“Schumann composed rather like most of us paint and decorate a house: Stick with the simple, basic colors,” wrote Howard Posner for LA Phil. The F major trio is “carefully laid out, and full of unifying devices; movements have themes, thematic contours, moods, or stylistic touches which remind the listener of the other movements.”

Franz Joseph Haydn wrote 29 trios for piano, violin and cello. The Trio in D Minor, Hob. XV:23, is one of three he composed in 1795 at the age of 63 to honor his patron Princess Marie Ermenegild Esterházy. Responding to the growing popularity of keyboard instruments, Haydn wrote the three-movement work as an accompanied piano sonata. The piano often takes the lead; the string players enter into dialogue with the keyboard, doubling keyboard lines and playing countermelodies. Robert Philip, writing for Hyperion Records, said that “Haydn poured into his accompanied sonatas as much inventiveness and range of musical expression as he did into his mature piano sonatas and string quartets.” Jacob agreed and promised “all the expected Haydn twists and turns.”

The trio will perform at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 5, at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, 1584 N. Prospect Ave. Tickets are available online. Free parking is available at Milwaukee Eye Care, 1684 N. Prospect Ave.