Zimmermann Trio Presented by Liszt Academy

This concert by Zimmermann Trio was not conceived under the star of light entertainment. It starts with the late String Trio of Schönberg, which was composed using the dodecaphonic (‘twelve-tone’) method. The work was commissioned by Harvard University in 1946 when Schönberg was in his early seventies; however, after he had prepared the first draft, he suffered a heart attack. Happily, he recovered; but afterwards he began to consider that the one-movement work should be a musical portrait of the suffering and hope he had experienced. The second work is an arrangement for string trio of the Goldberg Variations. The Bach work was published in 1742 as the final volume of the Klavierübung series. Legend has it that the piece was ordered by an insomniac count, who had his in-house harpsichordist, Johann Theophil Goldberg, play the series at night to ease the diplomat’s mind. It must be said that the title page of the printed score makes no mention of this. The theme is followed by thirty variations, ending each time with a return to the theme. Every third variation is a canon – the 30th is the so-called Quodlibet – and the others are either character pieces or virtuoso harpsichord works for two manuals. The arrangement, particularly of the latter, for string trio must have caused some headaches for those musicians undertaking the project.