‘It’s like an arranged marriage!’: a brand new piano trio makes its debut for a new London concert hall

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Earlier this year, pianist Emmanuel Despax received a dream invitation to form a piano trio for the opening of the new Bechstein Hall this season. He immediately set about finding the players, and through various conversations initially with me, we led on to inviting violinist Priya Mitchell to join the new Bechstein Trio. I was still living in the States at the time, and recall cooking a roast chicken during our Zoom chat discussing plans for the new hall and trio. It was an exciting thought to return home this summer with some unexpected performance opportunities on the horizon. 

Priya has Indian heritage and said that our formation reminded her of an arranged Indian marriage! We had never played together as a group before, and yet here we were forming a new ensemble with three very different personalities. Even our first meeting together was not playing, but in fact drinking coffee. We got on well personally and had positive instincts that this would work well. Priya and I have often performed together in the past, and it felt like a good idea to have at least two of the members already acquainted.

We have since rehearsed and performed a few concerts ahead of coming to London in December for our first performance in the Bechstein Hall. Most recently, we performed at a residency in Syde Manor, Cheltenham, as well as the Oxford Chamber Music Festival where Priya is artistic director, and at a new series at Minterne House in Dorset. Our next stop is my festival, the Hatfield House Music Festival which takes place from 10-13 October. We will be performing Fauré and Brahms in the opening concert in the beautiful Marble Hall on 10 October, and we’re grateful to Terrence Lewis for loaning the use of a Bechstein Piano. 

We have all played trios in different settings. I grew up playing a lot with my brother Magnus, who is now concertmaster of the Royal Opera House. We perform every year at my festival and often with Tom Poster as a piano trio. In fact, we recorded the Beethoven Ghost Trio some years ago. Priya and I had a very unusual experience performing trios with Melvyn Tan in the Pacific Ocean! We were on board a musical cruise ship from Honolulu to Acapulco, and the sea raged for the first five days crossing over to San Francisco. We could barely keep our bows on the strings and actually gave up trying to play. The crew said it was some of the worst conditions they had ever seen, which wasn’t exactly the most reassuring message!

It’s quite a rare opportunity to be offered a number of performances as trio in residence for this special new concert hall, curated by artistic director Terrence Lewis. It will be a chance to get to know each other musically and to delve into such an exciting array of repertoire composed for this formation. We can also expand the ensemble to include other instruments in due course.

We decided to start mainly with repertoire we have each had experience with, and also to thread a different Beethoven Trio through all future programmes, particularly since it was Beethoven who greatly developed the repertoire and who inspired many composers to come. We will include other masterpieces alongside Beethoven including by Brahms, Tchaikovsky (which happens to be programmed on his birthday - 7 May) and Fauré whose centenary anniversary since his death is this year. We are also looking into the prospect of commissioning a new work. 

Emmanuel says the Bechstein pianos have a wonderful warmth ideal for balancing with string players. Franz Liszt, student of Carl Czerny who was a student of Beethoven, said they were his favourite instrument, and there’s a long tradition of Beethoven being performed on these instruments. Hans von Bülow performed on this make of piano at the opening of the Bechstein Hall in Berlin on the 4 October 1892, an intimate setting for chamber music. This new Bechstein Hall in London only holds 100 seats, and therefore the audience will surely feel a part of all that is happening on stage. Priya plays on an Ballesteiri violin, made in 1760, and I play on a Stradivari cello made in 1692. 

We all have some connections with the Beaux Arts Trio; I studied with Bernard Greenhouse in his home on Cape Cod on a few occasions, having also grown up listening to their inspiring recordings. Emmanuel remembers a masterclass he had with Greenhouse at the Menuhin School, and Priya was a student there at the same time as Daniel Hope who was also a member in more recent times of this legendary piano trio. 

I have just returned from the Leeds Piano Competition where I performed with some of the competitors in the semi final round. They had to include one work of chamber music in their programmes. Elena Urioste and I performed the Beethoven Ghost Trio and Ravel Trio together with Jaeden Izik-Dzurko and Junyan Chen in only two short hour-long rehearsals in time for their performances. As it happens, they were both prize winners in the end taking first and second place, and the chamber music award went to Junyan.

Perhaps putting a piano trio together is more manageable in this setting than say a string quartet who spend hours together in an effort to become more homogenous and moving in the same direction. In contrast, while there is still a need for blend between the instruments in a piano trio, there can also be a more independent soloistic element to trio playing that allows each individual to have their own personality and freedom. It was a fascinating experience playing with such different characters, each bringing their own magic to the keyboard. 

We already have aspirations as a group, not least building a community of friends and supporters at the new concert hall. Each performance is an hour long, with dinner before, in between or after, and the programme is repeated twice in the evening. It will be a great place to mingle and perform and from which we can take the trio on the road to other venues around the UK and abroad. We already have a connection in the States that we hope will take the group across the pond for more performances in the future. I’m looking forward to developing as a trio and learning from each other along the way. It’s a wonderful thing to have a group to come back to through the year among all our other musical activities.

The announcement of the opening of the Bechstein Hall is to follow shortly. Sign up to their mailing list to be the first to hear about coming plans. We hope to see you at some of our performances this season and beyond. https://www.bechstein.co.uk/bechsteinhall

The Bechstein Piano Trio will perform at the Hatfield House Music Festival on 10 October - find out more here: https://hatfieldhousemusicfestival.org.uk/2024-festival/programme/

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