PreViews 2008–2009 Issue 6

Ax, Perlman, and Ma perform
for the first time as a piano trio

By John Mark Rafacz

Pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Itzhak Perlman, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma reach a new milestone in their illustrious careers when they perform for the first time as a piano trio in a concert at the Center for the Performing Arts. The trio is scheduled to perform only twice—at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 30, in Eisenhower Auditorium and the following evening at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

Perlman came up with the idea of playing with Ax and Ma because he wanted a chance to interpret outstanding trio repertoire with cream-of-the-crop musicians.

“It’s very simple. They’re wonderful musicians, and we are friends,” says Perlman, speaking by phone from Portland, Oregon. “To play with wonderful musicians is a great pleasure and privilege. But on top of it, when you’re socially interacting and you’re just friends, it makes it just a lot of fun to do.”

Ax, who frequently collaborates with Ma and has performed with both in an orchestra setting, is also looking forward to the trio’s debut.

“I’m very excited to be on stage with the two of them,” says the pianist, speaking by phone from New York City. “We’ve wanted to do this for quite a long time. We’ve done the Beethoven Triple Concerto a few times with orchestra, and we really enjoyed that.”

In honor of the 2009 bicentennial of Felix Mendelssohn's birth—the German Romantic composer was born nine days before Abraham Lincoln—the trio is scheduled to perform an all-Mendelssohn program. The musicians plan to play Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49, and Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66.

Mendelssohn also composed forty-eight short instrumental pieces collectively known as Songs Without Words. The Songs Without Words were written for piano soloist, but the March 30 concert includes a selection of the works transcribed for a stringed instrument accompanying the piano. Ax performs one with Ma and two with Perlman before the first trio. After the intermission, the pianist performs two each with Perlman and Ma before the second trio.

Ax, Perlman, and Ma have played chamber music together in the past, but they’ve never done it before an audience.

“Throughout my career, whenever I played chamber music, usually you always like to play with people that you know personally, and you sort of play for fun,” Perlman says. “Sometimes we would get together—not very often but every now and then—and just play chamber music for fun. So this is like playing chamber music for fun, except that it’s a concert. It’s really nice.”

Joining other musicians as an ad hoc chamber ensemble is usually a low-stress experience, Perlman says.

“We’re just getting together for a special occasion at this moment. And, as a result, what happens is that you just have the enjoyment of the moment,” he observes. “Sometimes it’s a challenge for trios or quartets to be together all the time, so then you have personality challenges and things like that just simply because you’re there all the time together. In this particular case, it’s just getting together for a very special occasion. So it’s all the good stuff without the potential problem.”

Tickets have been sold out for months. But for the more than 2,500 people who will be attending the Penn State concert, it promises to be an event of the sort rarely experienced outside a major city.

Although the setting for the trio concert is a large auditorium, the music will be intimate. Perlman places great importance on chamber music and has a special affection for playing it.

“When it comes to being a performing artist, whether you are a chamber music player, whether you are a soloist, or whether you play in an orchestra, chamber music is the most important element in your musical education and your background,” Perlman says. “Great composers—we’re talking about Mozart, and Haydn, and Schumann, and Schubert, and Brahms, and Mendelssohn, and Beethoven—I would say that probably their most successful and their greatest works … [were] for chamber music groups.”

At the conclusion of the Eisenhower concert, the three virtuosos will receive Penn State’s Medal for Distinguished Contributions to the Arts and Humanities. The purpose of the medal, created in 2006 by Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities, is to “honor individuals whose work has helped define the best of our times and to stimulate a dialogue that reaches beyond traditional disciplinary limits, even beyond the limits of the University itself.”

Previous medal recipients are novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie; architect Daniel Libeskind; and novelist, essayist, and political activist Mario Vargas Llosa.

Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring violinist James Lyon, professor of music at Penn State, is offered in Eisenhower Auditorium one hour before the performance and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity. Seating is available on a first-arrival basis.

TIAA-CREF has joined with the Center for the Performing Arts as the exclusive corporate partner in support of the debut performance by the Ax-Pearlman-Ma trio.