Let's make one thing perfectly
clear. The Eroica Trio is nothing like the Dixie Chicks. "The
Dixie Chicks! Oh, we get that one a lot!" exclaims Eroica's pianist
Erika Nickrenz, laughing. "I guess it's because the Dixie Chicks
are three women playing country music, and because we happen to be three
women playing classical music, we get compared to them all the time.
It's like, 'Meet the Eroica Trio, the Dixie Chicks of the classical
world!' I wonder if they ever get that? 'Oh, the Dixie Chicks!
You're kind of like the Eroica Trio of the country scene, aren't
you?'"
Musically speaking, of course,
the two all-female supergroups do not have a lot in common. When you
consider things like sheer musical power, technical mastery, and depth
of challenging material, let's face it–the Dixie Chicks aren't
even in the same league as the Eroica Trio. Sure, the winsome
three from Tennessee could boast that they are better known to the mainstream
than the Eroicas, but just give 'em time, Dixies, just give 'em time.
The Eroica Trio–namely
cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio, violinist Adela Peña, and Nickrenz
on piano–have known each other since childhood, and commonly refer
to one another as sisters. They all come from solid musical families.
Sara Sant'Ambrogio is the granddaughter of Isabelle Sant'Ambrogio, concert
pianist, and the daughter of John Sant'Ambrogio, principal cellist of
the St. Louis Symphony. Her sister is violinist Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio,
who has been serving as concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony and
is founder and artistic director of the Cactus Pear Music Festival,
a two-week summer chamber music festival in San Antonio. Erika Nickrenz'
parents are the esteemed violist Scott Nickrenz and Grammy-winning record
producer Joanna Nickrenz, who died last year. Though Adela Peña's
parents are not musicians; they raised their daughter to love classical
music, especially the music of Jascha Heifetz. Reportedly, she would
cry whenever they turned off Heifetz' recording of the Beethoven violin
concerto. Individually, all three women have performed as soloists to
serious acclaim, and have among them won dozens of awards. The Eroica
Trio officially formed 17 years ago while Nickrenz, Peña, and
Sant'Ambrogio were students at the Juilliard School. According to Sant'Ambrogio,
they chose the name Eroica, the French word for 'heroic,' because they
liked the larger-than-life feel of the word, not because of Beethoven's
famous "Eroica" Symphony No. 3 in E flat.
"We felt that our style
of playing was very passionate, and very big and very–heroic, in
a way," Sant'Ambrogio explains. "And we also liked the fact
that it was Eroic-a, with that 'Ah' ending, and the very slight
intonation of the feminine.' We thought that was really nice."
The subject of a recent
PBS Independent Lens
documentary, titled simply Eroica!, the attention-grabbing New
York-based trio has been dazzling audiences and defying the descriptive
powers of music writers since its debut. For good or bad, there has
always been an element of novelty to the gorgeous, glamorous, undeniably
energetic trio–"They look like supermodels and they play like
demons on crack," proclaimed one particularly hype-savvy writer
at the Tucson Citizen–and at times the hype has threatened
to overwhelm the music. Reviews have frequently focused as much attention
on the trio's onstage fashions and hairstyles as on the skill and passion
of its playing.
But the hype has helped
in terms of luring first-timers into the seats. Not that many piano
trios in this world can claim that a cocktail has been named for them,
as was the Eroica–two ounces OP Vodka, a splash of Grand Marnier,
and an ounce of lime juice–developed by Grand Marnier to celebrate
the trio's 2000 CD release Pasión.
Eroica has made six recordings
with Angel/EMI Classics, including a brand new recording of Beethoven's
Triple Concerto (with the Prague Chamber Orchestra). It has snagged
numerous honors (including a small stack of Grammy nominations), toured
the world a few times over, and recently played a series of concerts
in Australia, where the musicians were treated like superstars, with
paparazzi and red carpets (literally), their faces plastered on oversized
posters all over Melbourne. "That was surreal," Nickrenz reports.
The trio has performed nearly every major triple concerto in the classical
books, successfully championed and essentially resurrected the long-forgotten
Triple Concerto by Edouard Lalo (now back in the stores after years
of neglect), and has commissioned several new pieces. In fact, the creation
of composer Kevin Kaska's Triple Concerto, commissioned by Eroica in
2001, is a major piece of the PBS documentary, and the Eroicas have
now ordered up several exciting new commissions, including one by composer
and violinist Mark O'Connor.
Clearly, the women of the
Eroica Trio–whatever else their press clippings say–are accomplished
musicians. It's no surprise then that, of all the hyperbolic proclamations
made about them in the press, Peña is proudest of a
remark published in the Boston Globe, stating, "Forget the
marketing hype. Eroica Trio is the real thing."
Says Peña, "We
appreciated that so much, the fact that they skipped past whatever image
has been interpreted for us, and were able to focus on what we care
about the most, which is the music."
Speaking
of the Music
Although the Eroica Trio
has been playing the
music of Beethoven since the three women first formed the trio, the
new disc marks the first time the group has offered any
of Herr Ludwig's compositions on a recording. This is a bit ironic,
because the Triple Concerto has become something of a signature piece
for the trio in concerts, and, of course, because of that unintentionally
Beethovenesque name—Eroica.
As for finally recording
Beethoven, Nickrenz says, "It was about time. The Beethoven Triple
is the greatest piece ever written for trio and orchestra, and we've
been playing it a ton. We definitely felt ready."
Says Sant'Ambrogio, "We've
been playing this piece for 14 of our 17 years together. Right there,
you've got one really completely cohesive, jelled conception of this
piece. It really is one absolutely solid conception that comes totally
from our experience as the Eroica Trio."
Indeed. The recording proves,
if nothing else, that the Eroica Trio has mastered the art of blending.
As worked out by Peña, Sant' Ambrogio, and Nickrenz, the legendarily
complex piece, with its massive movements and intricate orchestrations,
is beautifully, miraculously balanced, illuminating the alternating
sweetness and power of the composition.
"A piece like this
allows a player to do more than show off with their little fingers,"
says Peña. "You're also showing off with your communication
skills, you're showing off how you can maintain a balance with the orchestra.
It's a great opportunity for fun, and an opportunity for exchange between
all the variables and all the artists."
If that's not enough, says
Peña, "Every time we play this piece, I discover something
new about the score. After all these years, this piece continues to
yield up surprises."
The members of the Eroica
Trio, perhaps something of a surprise in its own right, are fond of
surprises, and eager to be surprised by themselves and by their experiences
with the music. As Sant'Ambrogio poetically describes it, there are
times–when she's playing Schubert's Piano Trio in B flat, for example–when
she's so struck by a new realization that she feels outrageously fortunate
to have become a musician.
"I'll think, 'How lucky
am I, that this is what my life's work is?'" she says. "I
will never be satisfied, but I will always be uplifted. One of the reasons
I chose music as my life's work, at a very young age, was that I knew
I would never master it. That was important to me because I get bored
really easily. I can't stand being bored. But with music, I will always
know I can get better, and every day I know I can do something to make
an improvement in my playing, every day I can learn something new."
Sant'Ambrogio has dabbled
in acting, and regularly performs with an improv group in New York,
so it makes sense that she likens being a musician performing a piece
of music to being an actor playing a part. "When you are playing
a composer's music," she says, "it's almost like you're stepping
into their shoes, to feel what it's like to be them as a human being.
So when I'm playing Beethoven, I learn to trust my singular voice more
and more, and not be afraid to stand up there alone and to claim what
I believe to be beautiful and true.
"When I'm playing Schubert,"
she continues, "I feel the generosity in my character come more
to the fore, and the kindness and the compassion in Schubert's music
comes alive for me. Sometimes I come away thinking, 'I want to keep
this feeling in my everyday life, I want more of this.' In the Schubert
E flat Trio, in the last movement, when the slow-movement motif comes
back in with the cello, while Erika's piano is doing these running,
cascading chords, I'm doing it and it's minor, the way it was in the
slow movement, and then Adela's violin enters with me and we go into
major on her entrance–I always get chills up my spine at that moment,
and I always think to myself, 'There is a God!' Schubert makes me believe
in heaven and in God, and Beethoven makes me believe in being human."
And what does Sant'Ambrogio
learn from playing Brahms?
"Brahms! Brahms! Oh,
I learn a lot from Brahms. One thing I learn–and this is because
of my knowledge of his life, as well as the intimacy I feel when playing
his music–I learn to never, never delay or put off love. I learn
that you absolutely always have to be open to love at all moments of
your life, and you have to be grateful when it comes in, and to recognize
it and give it everything you have."
All
You Need Is . . .
Love, it seems, is a big
part of what the Eroica Trio stands for: love of music, love of life,
love of the audience–and the audiences' love of these players.
That remarkable audience-trio dynamic, so important to Eroica's live
performances, has, they agree, become an extremely significant, and
rewarding, part of their lives as musicians.
A few years ago in Japan,
just after a concert, the combined members of the trio were meeting
and greeting people backstage, when, as Peña recalls it, a young
woman approached them. An audience member, she was still flushed and
adrenalized from the harmonious onstage combustion she'd just witnessed,
and after thanking the Eroicas for their performance, the visitor made
a remark that has stuck with all three of them.
"I have to tell you,"
she said. "You've really inspired me, as a woman, to pursue
my own goals with passion and determination."
They were glad to hear it,
assuming she was a sister musician, but when asked what instrument she
played, the woman said, "Oh, I'm not a player. I'm a graphic artist!
But this concert tonight has changed me, it's changed how I think of
myself, and it's changed the way I intend to approach my career!"
It was a defining moment
in the trio's understanding of what, over the course of their 17 years
together, the players had gradually come to represent, at least in part,
to the world.
"I was so moved by
this woman's words," Peña says. "It was very rewarding
to hear that, by simply being who we are–three women playing at
a pretty high level of the musical world–we'd not only created
something new in classical music, we've inspired young women to step
out into the world and be whoever it is that they are. At that
moment I thought, maybe what we're doing really is making a difference."
It's more than a maybe.
As more and more people discover Eroica, and that includes both young
and old listeners, and those familiar with classical music and those
new to it, the hype may finally take a hike, leaving the trio's musical
passion to stand alone in the spotlight where it belongs. Beyond that,
imagine what could happen when they are finally discovered by
the Dixie Chicks.
Discography
The Eroica Trio has released
six albums on the
Angel/EMI label:
Beethoven: Triple Concerto,
62655-2 (2003)
Brahms: Piano Trios,
57199-2 (2002)
Pasión, 57033-2
(2000)
Baroque, 56873-2
(1999)
Dvorak/Shostakovich/Rachmaninov,
56673-2 (1998)
Eroica Trio, 56482-2
(1997)
What
the Trio Plays
"We all feel like sisters,"
says violinist Adela Peña of her Eroica Trio partners, "and
now we play on brotherly instruments!" Peña is describing
her recently acquired 1793 Giuseppe and Antonio Gagliano violin, whimsically
dubbed "the big brother" to cellist Sara Sant'Abrogio's 1800
Joannes Gagliano cello. Metaphorically, we suppose, this would make
Erika Nickrenz's 1911 Steinway the adopted brother of the family. As
for the bond formed between the violin and the cello, "It's a match
made in heaven," says Peña, who traded in her 1846 J.B.
Vuillaume for the Gagliano. "It's really cool to both have that
rich Naples Italian sound," she says. "The timbre of the instruments
is now really simpatico."
Photo of the Eroica Trio
by James Russell
