Prometheus Performs Pulitzer Winning Composer

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

A rarely-heard contemporary piece is paired with a chamber music blockbuster when the Prometheus Trio takes the stage on Monday, Feb. 17. Guest violinist Yuka Kadota joins pianist Stefanie Jacob and cellist Scott Tisdel for the performance.

Though his Trio-Sinfonia seldom appears on concert programs, its composer, Kevin Puts (b. 1972), is celebrated in the classical music world. Puts won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his first opera, Silent Night, and was honored with a 2023 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. He has written for orchestra, choral ensemble, solo instruments, band, wind ensemble and chamber groups.

After hearing their daughter, a violinist, perform two impressive pieces by Puts, and enjoying Puts’ 2022 opera, The Hours, Jacob and Tisdel searched for a Puts composition appropriate for the Prometheus Trio. Their research uncovered his only piano trio, Trio-Sinfonia, premiered in 2007 by the Eroica Trio.

The lyrical five-movement piece has not been recorded, a challenge for Prometheus. Jacob explains: “It’s not that we try to copy the interpretations of other groups, but it sure is nice to hear the solutions those other groups have come up with!”

In contrast, Franz Schubert’s Trio in E-flat Major is considered a giant of the repertoire. It’s frequently recorded, and the opening theme of the second movement has been used in numerous films and television shows, notably Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 movie, Barry Lyndon.

During his brief life (1797-1828), Schubert wrote hundreds of secular vocal works, seven symphonies, operas, sacred music, and piano music. The E-flat Major trio, one of two piano trios Schubert composed in 1827, is among the last major works he completed during a highly productive year that saw the composition of a quintet, three piano sonatas and a Symphony in C major.

Musicologist Kai Christiansen describes the 45-minute Trio as “gigantic in length and breadth, wealthy in thematic ideas, constant transformations and ingenious details of construction…. With his masterful handling of an ever-changing texture, his uncanny use of color within a chamber ensemble, his expert rhythmic sense and his exotic, emotionally keen harmonic modulations, Schubert always invests his recurring thematic material with new meaning, ultimately building a large-scale narrative where nothing is redundant and everything necessary.”

During his lifetime, Schubert’s music was familiar primarily to a small group of his family and friends in Vienna. However, in March 1828, his friends organized a concert of Schubert’s music in hopes of raising both funds and awareness of his compositions. Because the trio was on the program, it is one of only a handful of Schubert’s works performed in public before his death.

The Prometheus concert opens with Elegie, by Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk (1874-1935). Suk studied composition under his fellow countryman Antonín Dvořák, and wrote this short, heartfelt work to honor the memory of Czech writer Julius Zeyer.

The Prometheus Trio performs at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 17, at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, 1584 N. Prospect Ave. Tickets are available online. Complimentary parking is available at Milwaukee Eye Care, 1684 N. Prospect Ave., one block north of the Conservatory.