Ruehr: Winter Night Boston Trio

• Elena Ruehr (b. 1963): Piano Trio No. 4:
• 1 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 4: I. Ski 05:20
• 2 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 4: II. Kayak 04:36
• 3 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 4: III. Bike 04:55
• Piano Trio No. 5 "Troubled Times":
• 4 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 5 "Troubled Times": I. gutty and laborious 06:39
• 5 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 5 "Troubled Times": II. spooky then aggressive 02:27
• 6 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 5 "Troubled Times": III. playful but anxious 04:20
• Piano Quartet No. 2 "Maple":
• 7 Ruehr: Piano Quartet No. 2 "Maple": I. Sapling 03:35
• 8 Ruehr: Piano Quartet No. 2 "Maple": II. Prelude, Fughetta, Chorale 04:29
• 9 Ruehr: Piano Quartet No. 2 "Maple": III. The Luthier 03:40
• Piano Trio No. 3 "Winter Night":
• 10 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 3 "Winter Night": I. Lyrical 04:52
• 11 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 3 "Winter Night": II. Grazioso 04:30
• 12 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 3 "Winter Night": III. Aria 03:42
• 13 Ruehr: Piano Trio No. 3 "Winter Night": IV. Finale 04:44
• Total Runtime 57:49

Info for Ruehr: Winter Night

Prolific composer Elena Ruehr infuses her chamber works with programmatic elements that bring them to expressive and energetic life. Winter Night is the result of a close collaboration with the Boston Trio, who are joined by violist Marcus Thompson in Elena’s piano quartet.

A proliferation of programmatic music infuses Winter Night, composer Elena Ruehr’s seventh release on AVIE, the result of a particularly close collaboration with the international members of the Boston Trio – violinist Irina Muresanu and cellist Mihai Marica, both Romanians, and Korean pianist Heng-Jin Park –who are joined by native New Yorker violist Marcus Thompson in Elena’s piano quartet.

Emotions, energy and the natural world abound in the world premiere recordings of the album’s four works. The title track, Elena’s Piano Trio No. 3, is a four-movement narrative that is by turns lyrical, graceful and melodic. The joyful Piano Trio No. 4, subtitled “Ski, Kayak, Bike”, recalls childhood sports enjoyed with her father, the work’s dedicatee. The three movements of Piano Trio No. 5, “Troubled Times”, confront emotional responses to challenging personal circumstances, yet also seem especially appropriate now given the state of the world’s current events. Piano Quartet No. 2, “Maple”, is an homage to an ancient tree that has stood the tests of time, much like the Stradivarius instruments that were made using the beautiful, dense wood. Elena’s music appropriately references composers working at the same time as the famed luthier, Bach, Pachelbel and Vivaldi.

I first heard The Boston Trio almost 30 years ago at a concert in Jordan Hall in Boston. I was deeply impressed by their musicianship and wanted to write a work for them. Over the years I became close friends with both the pianist, Heng-Jin Park, and violinist, Irina Muresanu. I went to many of their concerts and composed a number of works for them, including one concerto each and a lot of chamber music. But I always wanted to write a trio specifically for The Boston Trio and to work with them on a recording. This album represents a compilation of works and the realization of a dream. It features Irina Muresanu, Heng-Jin Park, Mihai Marica and guest violist Marcus Thompson on the piano quartet.

Boston Trio
Marcus Thompson, viola

Boston Trio
Violinist Irina Muresanu, cellist Mihai Marica, and pianist Heng-Jin Park each have distinguished careers as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and have appeared with major orchestras and premier music festivals throughout the United States and Europe. The Boston Trio is passionately committed to furthering the exposure and performances of new music. They have premiered several works written for and dedicated to them. The trio has been invited to perform for numerous prestigious music series including the Celebrity Series of Boston, Seiji Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood, Chamber Music Society of Utica, Gualala Arts Chamber Music Series, ‘First Monday’ series at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC), Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine, Harvard Musical Association, Concerts at the Point, Brigham Young University, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Howland Chamber Music Circle, University of Arkansas, Merkin Hall, and for a nationally televised concert from the Belgrade Music Festival at Kolarac Foundation Hall in Serbia. The Boston Trio has released several acclaimed recordings. Actively involved in the education of the next generation of musicians, the Boston Trio has held mini-residencies at the Dickinson College (Pennsylvania), Gordon College (Massachusetts), St. Olaf College (Minnesota), and Luther College (Iowa). The trio members have coached chamber music at Tanglewood Institute of Music, Harvard University, and MIT, and served as ensemble-in-residence at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and at NEC. The Trio is committed to bringing chamber music to a broader community through outreach activities at public schools and assisted living centers. The Boston Trio’s individual members serve on the faculties of the NEC, the University of Maryland, and MIT, and are in demand as master class teachers throughout the United States, Asia and Europe.

Marcus Thompson
violist, has appeared as soloist, recitalist, and in chamber music series throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Far East. He has been a soloist with the orchestras of Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, and Saint Louis, the National Symphony, the Boston Pops and the Czech National Symphony in Prague. He performed Keith Jarrett’s Bridge of Light with the Atlanta Symphony, and regional premieres of John Harbison’s Viola Concerto: on the West Coast with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (with the composer conducting), in Chicago with the Chicago Sinfonietta, and in Boston with the NEC Honors Orchestra.

Thompson has received critical acclaim for his performances of the Penderecki Viola Concerto in Boston with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Symphony Orchestra and in London (UK); for the premiere of Elena Ruehr’s Viola Concerto Shadow Light with the New Orchestra of Washington; and for the premiere of Olly Wilson’s Viola Concerto with the Rochester Philharmonic. He has played Hindemith’s Viola d’amore Concerto (Kammermusik No. 6) with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Saratoga and concertos by Vivaldi at the Bravo Festival in Colorado and at Aston Magna in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

He has premiered and performed many recital and chamber works by MIT composers including Peter Child, Keeril Makan, Charles Shadle, and John Harbison, and has recorded Barry Vercoe’s iconic Synapse for Viola and Computer. His recording of the Concerto for Viola, Chamber Orchestra & Percussion commissioned from composer and organist Anthony Newman in 1985 was re-released along with concertos for five other instruments by the composer.

Thompson’s recordings with orchestra also include concertos by Hindemith, Bartók, Serly, and Bloch, along with works by Françaix, Martin, and Jongen. Recent releases include Elena Ruehr’s Shadow Light with the New Orchestra of Washington, and John Harbison’s Viola Concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Thompson has been a guest of the Audubon, Borromeo, Cleveland, DaPonte, Emerson, Fine Arts, Jupiter, Lydian, Miami, Muir, Orion, Parker, Shanghai, and Vermeer string quartets and a frequent participant at chamber music festivals in Anchorage, Seattle, Sitka, Los Angeles, Montreal, Edmonton, Rockport (Massachusetts and Maine), Rio de Janeiro, Spoleto, Amsterdam, Dubrovnik and Okinawa. He has been a frequent guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and performed with them on a Live from Lincoln Center telecast. He appears on recordings of chamber works released by Music from the Sitka Festival, Het Reizend Muziekgezelschap, and the Boston Chamber Music Society.

Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Thompson holds a doctorate in viola performance from Juilliard. He currently lives in Boston, where he is a member of the viola faculty at New England Conservatory. He has served as violist and Artistic Director of the Boston Chamber Music Society since 2009 and is the founder of the MIT Chamber Music Society and the Institute’s Emerson/Harris private study program. In 1995 he was recognized for his extraordinary teaching at MIT and named a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow and Robert R. Taylor Professor of Music, followed a decade later by his appointment as Institute Professor.

In 2022, at its 47th International Viola Congress, Thompson was awarded the American Viola Society Career Achievement Award ‘In recognition of distinguished contributions to viola performance and viola pedagogy through his influential recordings and his celebrated tenure at NEC and MIT, hosting the 1985 International Congress, and for advocacy and leadership on behalf of the viola.’

Elena Ruehr
says of her music, ‘the idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complexWritten for violinist Tom Stone, this piano trio is subtitled ‘S . And from Gramophone Magazine, ‘The sound world is wholly Ruehr: it never sounds like anyone else and the effect is exhilarating… her output is unified by her desire to communicate effectively without compromise…’

Currently composer-in-residence with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, her discography includes orchestral works (O’Keeffe Images, BMOP Sound), the opera Toussaint Before the Spirits (BMOP Sound), cantatas (Averno, with the Trinity Choir, Avie), and chamber music (Six String Quartets, with the Cypress String Quartet, Borromeo Quartet and Stephen Salters, Avie). Her other recordings include Icarus (Avie), Jane Wang considers the dragonfly (Albany), Lift (Avie), Shimmer (with Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble, Albany) and Shadow Light (with the New Orchestra of Washington / Marcus Thompson, Acis), among many others.

While she has a standing collaboration with Quartet ES, her works have also been commissioned, recorded, and performed by numerous other ensembles including the Arneis, Biava, Borromeo, Cypress, Delgani, Lark, Quartet Nouveau, Roco and Shanghai string quartets. An award-winning faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Known for her vocal music and collaboration with poets, she has written five operas, five cantatas and a number of songs. She has also written extensively for orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, chamber ensemble, instrumental solo, opera, dance and silent film. Her work has been performed internationally and has been described as ‘sumptuously scored and full of soaring melodies’ (New York Times) and ‘unspeakably gorgeous’ (Gramophone). ‘Whenever this trio plays, drop everything and go hear them!’ hailed the Boston Globe on the occasion of the Boston Trio’s Tanglewood debut at Ozawa Hall. Acclaimed for their superb sense of ensemble and wondrous balance, these virtuosic and profound musicians are committed to creating exceptional and daring performances of the standard and contemporary repertoire.

Booklet for Ruehr: Winter Night