A concerto usually features a single soloist — say, a violinist or a pianist — playing with an orchestra. So what was Ludwig van Beethoven thinking when he made a piano trio the soloist in his 1804 Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano in C Major? The logistics are mind-boggling: The piece creates a musical conversation between a sizable orchestra and three solo instruments that can also play in three different duet combinations and as a chamber group.
Beethoven solved the puzzle by making “the symphony part like the fourth instrument,” said Lou Kosma, music director and principal conductor of Vermont Philharmonic. The venerable Montpelier community orchestra, which turned 64 this year, will feature the Triple Concerto at its winter concerts this weekend at the Elley-Long Music Center in Colchester and the Barre Opera House. The soloists are the recently formed but impressive Champlain Trio, composed of pianist Hiromi Fukuda, violinist Letitia Quante and cellist Emily Taubl.
The program, titled “Stars of Winter: Celebrating Vermont Talent,” also features Burlington High School senior Laura Zhou-Hackett, the 2023 Jon Borowicz Memorial Student Music Scholarship winner, playing a movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor; Aaron Copland’s An Outdoor Overture; and Richard Strauss’ Serenade in E-flat Major for 13 wind instruments.
Kosma has been directing Vermont Philharmonic for 23 years. When the orchestra’s concertmaster, Quante, formed Champlain Trio with Fukuda and Taubl three years ago, Kosma saw his chance to present a work that hasn’t been heard in the Green Mountain State since the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio performed it with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra in Manchester in 1999.
“I knew [Champlain Trio] is top-notch, and you need that” for the Triple Concerto, said Kosma, a double bassist who played in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra in New York City for 36 years. “It was most important that we got the OK from Emily,” he added, “because one of the hardest parts is the cello.”
Taubl said the trio was “thrilled” to be asked. “It really is a bucket-list piece for any piano trio, and so rarely is there an opportunity for us to play it,” she said.
The work is rarely programmed because it requires setting up three soloists, one with a concert grand piano, alongside the conductor, all in front of a large orchestra. Performing the Triple Concerto on the Barre Opera House’s small stage will be a challenge, Taubl noted.
“It feels almost like putting on a little opera: It’s got so many characters and moving parts, and it’s really a spectacle to see,” Taubl said.
The work is also fairly unique. No other composer attempted a concerto for piano trio and orchestra until the 20th century; recent examples on a still-sparse list include a 1995 concerto for piano trio and orchestra by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and a 2010 one by former Vermonter Nico Muhly.
“It’s not brooding Beethoven.” Lou Kosma
Beethoven wrote his Triple Concerto for his 16-year-old student, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, making the piano part commensurately doable. The cello part is challenging because it’s written in an unusually high register — the better to be heard over the orchestra — and because the instrument opens each movement, Taubl said. (Interestingly, Beethoven never wrote a cello concerto.)
Nevertheless, Taubl said, “I’ve really fallen in love with the piece over the last five months. It’s always sliding in and out of the soloists’ and the orchestra’s parts. The orchestra has these beautiful, long, lyrical melodies that overlap with the soloists. But sometimes it’s really spare; he paces the experience so it doesn’t just overwhelm. It’s an amazing piece.”
The trio’s musicians all have ties to the Juilliard School in New York City. Taubl and Quante both attended its precollege division as high schoolers. Fukuda earned her doctorate in musical arts at Juilliard and is now a staff pianist there.
Fukuda also teaches piano at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Locally, she performs and teaches as an artist-faculty member at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, a summertime strings program that takes place at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester.
Taubl, who earned a graduate diploma in cello performance from New England Conservatory in Boston, is principal cellist of the Springfield Symphony in Massachusetts and teaches at the University of Vermont. She founded and runs the Conservatory Audition Workshop, a summertime program on the St. Mike’s campus that offers cellists guidance on auditioning for music conservatories.
Quante is well-known in Burlington as a VSO violinist and a founding member of the VSO’s Jukebox Quartet. She earned her bachelor’s in musical arts at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, a conservatory in Maryland.
Vermont Philharmonic’s 65 musicians have every level of training, but, crucially, they are all volunteers, Kosma pointed out. The conductor, who lives in Teaneck, N.J., declared, “They’re wonderful to work with. I wouldn’t be driving 300 miles each way if it wasn’t worth it.”
Kosma describes the Triple Concerto as “a joyous piece. It’s not brooding Beethoven.”
“I’m really looking forward to this,” he added. “I’ve been fussy with it. It has to be the best we can play and for the person who never heard the music at all. [Met Opera orchestra conductor James] Levine used to say, ‘I don’t care if you’ve played 450 Aidas; you need to play it for the person who never heard it.’ This concert is for the person who hasn’t heard it.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Three’s Company | Champlain Trio and Vermont Philharmonic perform a rare triple concerto by Beethoven”
This article appears in The Love & Marriage Issue 2023.
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