This 64-minute CD from Tavros Records is unusual for its intense subject material (in anguish, Rachmaninoff began writing the D minor Élégiaque Trio the day he heard the great Tchaikovsky had died).

The recording has earned critical acclaim, including a high rating in the venerated Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs.

Read more about the artists and the composer below.

Audio CD      $16.97

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Yung Wook Yoo was born in 1977 in Seoul, Korea, where he began studies in piano at the age of six.  He gave his first public recital at the age of ten, playing a program entirely of his own compositions – including an elegy written for his father, who had passed away the year before.  This performance caused a huge public stir, and earned him financial support for his education and a subsequent move to the United States. At the Juilliard School he studied with Katherine Parker, Martin Canin and, with the celebrated pianist Jerome Lowenthal.

     Yung Wook has won numerous national and international competitions, including the celebrated Kosciuszko Chopin Competition in the U.S. and the Montreal International Music Competition.  In 1998 he won the Gold Medal at the 13th Paloma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competition that resulted in a worldwide concert tour that has taken him to Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Japan. Yung Wook, who attended the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara during the summer 2001 session, now lives in South Korea, where he teaches and continues his concert career.

Julia Sakharova was born in 1979 in Zheleznovodsk, Russia, and at the age of eight gave her first public performance as soloist with the Moldavian Symphony Orchestra. In 1992, Julia and her mother moved to Moscow so that Julia could continue her training in violin at the prestigious Central Special Music School, run under the auspices of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory.  While in Moscow, Julia performed with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and gave concerts throughout Russia, as well as in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Austria and Spain.  In Moscow, she was first-prize winner in the 1995 International Competition for Music of Eastern and Central Europe.

     As a scholarship student at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Ohio, soloed under composer/conductor John Williams with the Oberlin Orchestra at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.  She attended the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara during the summer of 2001. Today she is Assistant Concertmaster of the Alabama Symphony Orechesta, and a member of the celebrated Arianna String Quarter, which is in residence at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, where Julia is part of the Music Faculty as Associate Professor of Violin.

Margrét Arnadóttir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1981.  Raised in a family of musicians – her father a professional organist and violinist, her brother playing piano, her sister a violinist – Margrét took up cello “because it was a different instrument from the others.”  She began her musical studies at the age of five at the New Music School in Reykjavik.

     In 1994 Margrét enrolled at the Reykjavik College of Music, where she studied with Gunnar Kvaran and received her soloist diploma from the school in 2000. She appeared as soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and performed in master classes for Steven Isserlis, Roman Jablonsky and Lazlo Varga.

     Margrét, who was studying at The Juilliard School with Harvey Shapiro at the time of her participation in the Music Academy of the West’s summer 2001 session, has performed in numerous solo and chamber music recitals in Iceland and throughout the U.S.  Today, she lives in Reykajvik where she has appeared as a soloist with Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra. Margrét has performed in recitals and chamber music concerts in Iceland, USA and China, is a member of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Elektra Ensemble.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943) inscribed at the top of his D-minor piano Trio Élégaique, “à la mémoire d’un grand artiste,” and the great artist he was referring to was Tchaikovsky.

Rachmaninoff was 20 years old when Tchaikovsky died of cholera, on November 6, 1893 (October 25, according to the Julian calendar used in Russia), and the news plunged him into a devastation and anguish that he could only express in a way he knew how – by writing music.  The D-minor Trio Élégaique, an elegy to Tchaikovsky, is an expression of that grief.

Tchaikovsky had done the same thing by writing his A minor Trio upon the death of his friend, Nicholas Rubinstein.  This trio had provided Rachmaninoff with a model for his first Trio Élégaique in G minor, written as a conservatory exercise during the previous year, from January 18-21, 1892.

The D-minor Trio Élégaique took Rachmaninoff six weeks to write. Later, in a letter to Natalya Skalon, he wrote that he had “trembled for every phrase, sometimes crossed out absolutely everything and began to think and think about it all over again.”

Tchaikovsky had been Rachmaninoff’s champion at the Moscow Conservatory, where the younger composer had had been admitted at the age of 12.  His courses were piano studies with Zveriev (later Siloti), and harmony and composition with Anton Arensky and Alexander Taneiev.  However, Rachmaninoff skipped classes, hated practicing and studying, and it was only because performance and composition were effortless for him that he kept pace with the other students.

One of Rachmaninoff’s first original compositions, written as an exercise, was a piano duet transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony.  Zveriev was so impressed with this work that he took Rachmaninoff and another student to Tchaikovsky to perform the piece.  Tchaikovsky responded by giving Rachmaninoff his first commission – a piano-duet transcription of The Sleeping Beauty.  Rachmaninoff was then 17 years old.

At the Moscow Conservatory, Rachmaninoff played his own Song Without Words for a jury that included Tchaikovsky, who gave him the highest possible rating. In 1892, he won the Gold Medal for composition, and was placed on the honor roll.  For his graduation exercise, he completed a one-act opera, Aleko, which was performed at the Conservatory to such high praise that it found a publisher.  Tchaikovsky then arranged for the opera to be performed at the Bolshoi Theater on May 9, 1893.

Six months later, Tchaikovsky was dead.

Later, Rachmaninoff wrote:

To him I owe the first and deciding success in my life.  It was my teacher Zvierew who took me to him. Tschiakowsky at the time was already world famous and honored by everybody, but he remained unspoiled. He was the most charming artist and man I ever met. He had an unequaled delicacy of mind.  He was modest, as all truly great people are, and simple, as very few are.

Tschaikowsky was about fifty-five at the time, that is to say, more than twice my age, but he talked to me, a young beginner, as if I were his equal.  He listened to my first opera, Aleko, and arranged for it to be performed at the Imperial Theater…Tschaikowsky did even more. Timidly and modestly, as if he were afraid I might refuse, he asked if I would consent to have my work produced with one of his operas. To be on a poster with Tschaikowsky was about the greatest honor that could be paid to a composer, and I would not have dared to suggest such a thing. Tschaikowsky knew this. He wanted to help me, but was anxious also not to offend or humiliate me.

I soon felt the result of Tschaikowsky’s kindness. I began to be known, and some years later I became leader of the Imperial Opera orchestra. Having once reached this important position, the rest came easy.

The first performance of the D-minor Trio Élégaique was given by Rachmaninoff with the violinist Yuly Konyus and cellist Anatole Brandukov on January 31, 1894.

-Hillary Hauser