Beethoven Cycle!

Yesterday we played the final concert in our Beethoven piano trio cycle at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston. The cycle has taken us most of a year to play (we gave two other concerts in January and March) and it has been a wonderful adventure. Beethoven's piano trios span most of his compositional life; the set of Op. 1 trios were the first works he published, the Op. 70s are from the middle of his career, and the "Archduke" trio and "Kakadu" variations come from near the end (not quite as late as the final quartets unfortunately...if only we had an Op. 136 trio!) I am so glad we had the opportunity to play all of these works this year, and also very happy that we'll keep playing them many times in the years to come ;-)

Here's a picture of Em and Donna with violist and music impresario, Scott Nickrenz, who runs the Gardner museum series.




After the concert, my parents threw an awesome party at their home in Cambridge (this has become something of a tradition after our performances in the area). My mother is an AMAZING cook and she made an astonishing amount of totally delicious food including about 20 different dishes and 7 pies for dessert!
This was mostly a solo effort, although my sister Amanda assisted during the last week and baked an amazing cake. And the Claremonters (plus two boyfriends and a husband who came along on the trip) helped with the last-minute preparation!

Here's a picture of the whole gang of us: from left to right - Donna, Kai Yu, Emily, Chad, Julie, Aaron, Amanda!