10/02/2026
Bravo to the Gryphon Trio for opening our 50th anniversary subscription season with two programs on Sunday and Monday that explored both the classical roots and extraordinary range of the piano trio repertoire.
The contrast between Beethoven’s first published piano trio, Op. 1, No. 1, which opened Sunday’s concert, and the great Archduke Trio, which concluded Monday’s concert, was especially striking. The youthful Op. 1, No. 1 (1795) charms with its buoyant melodies and transparent textures, giving each instrument room to shine, whereas the Archduke (completed in 1811) unfolds on a much grander scale, with greater harmonic richness, structural complexity, and an extraordinary breadth of expression.
Carmen Braden's Candle Ice combines the trio with field recordings of the crystalline shards of “candle ice” from Great Slave Lake jostling in the water as the lake begins to thaw. Braden draws rhythms, pitches and elements of the work’s structure from the sounds of the ice itself, blurring the boundary between music and nature. The dramatic sweep of Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 3 brought Sunday’s concert to a rousing conclusion.
Monday evening revealed another remarkable quality of the Gryphon Trio: their ability to move effortlessly between very different musical worlds, from the elegance and clarity of Haydn to Christos Hatzis’s Old Photographs, which itself travels from introspective Romanticism to Piazzolla-inflected tango, before concluding with the breadth and grandeur of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio.
It felt like a homecoming for the trio, as it is their fourth appearance on our series. Annalee grew up in Calgary, and she and the trio had family and friends in the audience.
It was also fitting for CPM to open its subscription season with a piano trio. The series was founded by cellist Talmon Hertz, and early concerts featured his Hertz Bartlett Trio which featured violinist Yaëla Hertz and pianist Dale Bartlett.
Thanks to Annalee Patipatanakoon for her private coachings with violin students including Aedan Lowry. He and the Aurelia Trio, which was coached by Roman Borys, are members of our Dick Matthews Young Artist Development Program. Thanks to Jamie Parker for his masterclass featuring piano students from the University of Calgary's School of Creative and Performing Arts.
