On February 28, the Morgenstern Trio returns to Carmel for their eagerly-awaited sixth performance for Chamber Music Monterey Bay audiences. Within two years of the Trio’s formation in Germany, they had amassed a number of top prizes and awards, including the prestigious Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio Award in 2010. This prize introduced the Morgenstern Trio to the classical music stage in the United States, and provided them with a 20-concert nationwide tour that earned them superlative reviews and immediate re-bookings. Following one performance, The Washington Post wrote of their “polished technique and musical imagination… A smashing debut.”
The Trio’s program includes Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Op. 1, the joyous Trio on Irish Folk Tunes by Frank Martin, and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht [Transfigured Night], Op. 4, an early masterpiece originally written for string sextet. The Morgenstern played this lushly Romantic piece as part of our “virtual season” in 2021, and their performance was so remarkable and moving that they were asked to play it again in person, for a wider audience, when they next appeared in Carmel.
