Washington University’s Eliot Trio to present annual concert April 10

Washington University’s Eliot Trio will perform a pair of piano trios by Edouard Lalo (1823-92) and Franz Schubert (1797-1828) at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 10, in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall.

Tickets are $15, or $10 for seniors and Washington University faculty and staff. Students are admitted free. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and at the door. The 560 Music Center is located at 560 Trinity Ave., near the intersection with Delmar Boulevard.

For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email kschultz@artsci.wustl.edu.

The Eliot Trio consists of Seth Carlin, professor of music and director of the piano program in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences; violinist David Halen, concertmaster for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; and cellist Bjorn Ranheim, also with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

The group, established by Carlin in the early 1990s, is named for Washington University founder William Greenleaf Eliot and is dedicated to performing masterworks of the piano trio literature. It typically presents one concert each year.

The April 10 program will feature Schubert’s much-loved Trio No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 100. One of his final works, this four-movement composition was written for the wedding of a friend in 1827 — just a year before Schubert’s death — and gives full voice to the composer’s melodic gifts.

Also on the program is Lalo’s Trio for Piano and Strings No. 3 in A minor, Op. 26, written in 1880. Though he was one of the first French composers to write piano trios — composing two between 1850-52 — Lalo is probably best known today for his Symphonie Espagnole (1874) and for the opera Le Roi d’Ys (1888).

“Whereas the Schubert is one of the beloved works of the repertoire, the Lalo is something of a rarity,” Carlin notes. “I consider it a minor masterpiece which deserves much wider performance.”

Carlin has performed with orchestras around the world and with conductors such as Nicholas McGegan, Leonard Slatkin and Roger Norrington. He has appeared in recital at major international festivals and with Pinchas Zukerman, Anner Bylsma and Malcolm Bilson, among others. In 1991-92 Carlin performed the complete Schubert fortepiano sonatas in New York City — concerts that were broadcast nationally on National Public Radio. More recently he appeared as soloist with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s “Triple” Concerto as well as with San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque, the period-instrument orchestra.

Halen has been with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra since 1991 and was appointed concertmaster in 1995. He frequently appears as a soloist, both with the symphony orchestra and in performance around the country, and often teams with Carlin for local chamber concerts. As co-founder and artistic director of the Innsbrook Institute, at Innsbrook, MO, Halen also coordinates a weeklong summer festival of chamber music performance and training for aspiring artists. He plays a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin made in Milan in 1763.

Ranheim, who joined the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in 2005, previously served as associate principal cello of the Fort Worth Symphony and has performed and toured with the orchestras of Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit and Baltimore. He also has served as principal and assistant principal cello with the New World Symphony, the National Repertory Orchestra, the Aspen Festival Orchestra and Quebec City’s critically acclaimed Le Violons du Roy. A committed advocate of contemporary music, Ranheim also has performed world-premiere works by Stephen Paulus, Paul Schoenfield and Steven Heitzig.