Three soloists, an orchestra and one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s more unusual works came together Saturday evening as Berks Sinfonietta presented “Conversations in C: The Triple Concerto” at Atonement Lutheran Church in Wyomissing.
The Oct. 3 concert centered on Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56, a work that places violin, cello and piano in front of an orchestra. Violinist Grace Park, cellist Noémie Raymond and pianist Zhenni Li-Cohen joined Berks Sinfonietta for the performance, led by guest conductor and Reading native Tyler Readinger.
While a traditional concerto generally focuses attention on a single soloist, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto creates a different relationship. The three featured musicians must function both as soloists and as a small ensemble within the larger orchestra — sometimes stepping forward individually and sometimes listening and responding to one another.
That combination became a recurring theme as Park, Raymond and Li-Cohen reflected on the performance afterward. Although the three musicians had never performed the concerto together before, they were not strangers.
“We’ve all played individually with each other,” Raymond said. “I played with Grace. I played with Zhenni. Zhenni played with Grace and me, but never the three of us. So it was a fun experience to be able to do that all together.”
Raymond, a cellist from Montreal who studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston, described the Triple Concerto as unusual because it combines two different musical worlds.
“It’s one of the only ones that is for three instruments and orchestra,” she said. “So you have both aspects of chamber music and solo, like the concerto aspect. And that’s very fun. It’s very unusual.”
For Park, who is from Los Angeles and now lives in New York City, Saturday marked another milestone: It was the first time she had ever performed Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.
She had, however, known the music for much longer.
“I grew up listening to it, so it was really exciting” to finally perform the piece, Park said.
Doing so alongside friends changed the experience as well. Rather than three soloists simply arriving to perform their respective parts, Park said their familiarity made rehearsing and performing feel natural.
“This whole week has just been really, in a sense, more relaxing because you’re just doing it with friends,” she said. “So it felt a little bit just kind of like glorified chamber music, which is what concertos could feel like in that most ideal sense.”
That idea, chamber music on a much larger scale, also captured what made the work different for Li-Cohen.
A pianist performing a concerto is normally positioned as the individual soloist against, and in partnership with, an orchestra. In the Triple Concerto, Li-Cohen instead had to navigate her place within a trio while that trio simultaneously interacted with the full ensemble.
“For me personally, I’ve never done a triple concerto, so it’s like piano trio, like chamber music, but playing with the orchestra,” Li-Cohen said. “So it’s a very interesting, it’s like a new dynamic for me.”
“When I play with orchestra, you feel like the soloist,” she added. “You have to be above orchestra, but then you’re also a part of this ensemble.”
Chamber music, she explained, brings a different expectation.
“It’s all about being collaborative,” Li-Cohen said. “So it’s a really interesting balance you have to figure out. And they’re the best people to figure this out with.”
A concerto built around conversation
Beethoven composed the Triple Concerto for piano, violin, cello and orchestra, creating a piece in which the soloists frequently interact rather than simply taking turns in the spotlight. Berks Sinfonietta’s program presented the work in three movements: Allegro, Largo and Rondo alla polacca.
The concerto occupied the entire second half of Saturday’s main program, following intermission. That placement itself stood out to Raymond.
“It’s unusual also to end with a concerto,” she said. “Usually it’s the first half. So that was interesting and refreshing as well, in the programming.”
The arrangement allowed the Triple Concerto to serve as the destination of a program built around different kinds of musical conversation.
Park said the friendship among the soloists helped make their own communication easier during rehearsals. She compared it to speaking with someone who already understands how you express yourself.
“There’s a certain understanding because, you know, just kind of like when you have regular dialogue with anyone, you can use certain words that you do understand,” she said. “The way you phrase it, that’s very much the process of rehearsal.”
The three musicians, she said, seemed to share that language.
“We definitely do seem to be more or less on the same wavelength with our use of words, our use of description, so rehearsals have been really easy,” Park said. “So coming together like this just felt like a big kind of party.”
Raymond also praised the setting and the collaboration with Readinger and Berks Sinfonietta.
“The conductor was a pleasure to work with,” she said. “And the acoustic was very good. The orchestra sounded great. So it was a lot of fun.”
The three guest artists brought extensive performing backgrounds to Wyomissing. Park, winner of the Naumburg International Violin Competition, has appeared at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and performed internationally. Raymond has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie and London’s Royal Albert Hall. Li-Cohen has appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center and has performed as a soloist with orchestras including the Bergen Philharmonic and Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.
Readinger brought a local connection to the program. A Reading native and Kutztown University graduate, he has served as assistant conductor of the Reading Philharmonic Orchestra and as a cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and was recently appointed assistant conductor of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra.
Looking beyond Beethoven
The evening was not devoted solely to one of classical music’s best-known composers.
Before intermission, Berks Sinfonietta performed music by Elfrida Andrée and Leopold Koželuch, two composers whose names are considerably less familiar to many modern listeners.
Andrée’s “Andante quasi recitativo for String Orchestra” opened the main concert. A Swedish composer and performer who lived from 1841 to 1929, Andrée broke barriers for women during her career, while her compositions have received renewed attention in more recent years.
The orchestra then turned back to the Classical era for Koželuch’s Symphony in C Major, P I:6. The four-movement work moved from its opening Poco adagio through Allegro poco adagio and a Minuetto and Trio before concluding with Presto con fuoco.
Koželuch, who lived from 1747 to 1818, achieved considerable recognition during his lifetime as a composer, pianist and teacher. In 1792, he succeeded Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a court composer in Vienna. His presence alongside Beethoven also fit the evening’s exploration of music centered around C major while giving the audience a chance to hear a composer whose reputation has not remained as prominent as some of his contemporaries.
The programming therefore stretched beyond simply pairing famous works. It placed Beethoven alongside music from composers of different periods and different levels of modern familiarity.
Young musicians open the evening
The concert began before Berks Sinfonietta took the stage, with a pre-concert performance by Berks Camerata, a newly formed local string chamber ensemble.
The group is made up of seven young musicians: violinists Naomi Tam, Kevin Ding and Freya Cao; violists Isaac Huan and Ryan Li; and cellists Ethan Zhou and James Tiffany. The musicians first connected through orchestral performances and their church community and formed the ensemble around their shared interest in chamber music.
For Saturday’s performance, members of the group presented selections spanning three composers and distinct musical styles.
They performed the first and fourth movements from Antonín Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, commonly known as the “American” Quartet; the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C Major; and the second movement of Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major.
The student performance added another layer to a concert already built around musicians listening and responding to one another. A string quartet strips that idea down to its essentials: individual players have their own musical lines, but the performance depends on how those parts fit together.
Berks Camerata’s appearance also connected the evening’s internationally experienced guest artists with young musicians developing their own skills in Berks County. According to the ensemble’s program biography, its members are also active outside music in academics, sports, robotics, school clubs and their church community.
For Berks Sinfonietta, now in its 13th season, the combination reflected the organization’s stated goal of pairing professional performances with educational opportunities and local talent.
The evening ultimately moved from a young chamber ensemble to a professional orchestra and then to three friends taking on a work that combines both forms.
Park also offered advice that could resonate with young musicians like those who opened the evening, emphasizing persistence through the inevitable ups and downs of pursuing music.
“Expect that there are ebbs and flows,” Park said. “It’s never consistently going up.”
“Persistence and keeping with that, not giving up on it,” she added. “I would say that would be my one piece of advice.”