Woodmere will launch its 2026 season of chamber music recitals Saturday, Jan. 24, at 5 p.m. The featured artists will be the returning Trio Excelsior!, comprised of pianist Marja Kaisla, violinist Yevgeniy Dyo and cellist Elina Snellman-Lang. Together they will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Archduke” Piano Trio, Enrique Granados’ Piano Trio No. 2, and “Café Music” by Paul Schoenfield.

The Trio’s program is a veritable overview of the repertoire composed for the piano trio over the centuries, dating back to the classical era of Beethoven, the nationalistic/romantic style of Granados, and the modern “pastiche” approach of combining various styles in one score of Schoenfield. The Granados is of particular interest to me, since my piano teacher at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Don Julio Esteban, studied as a child with Granados.

“When we plan new programs,” Kaisla said, “we always look for repertoire that includes something for everyone: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something ‘blue.’ The program for the Woodmere Art Museum perfectly fits these requirements.

“Beethoven’s ‘Archduke’ Trio is one of the best–known of all of the composer’s chamber music works. Written in 1811, it follows the traditional classical form and prominently features the piano in all four of its movements, especially in the heavenly and achingly beautiful third movement,” Kaisla continued. “But its thematic explorations in novel harmonic progressions are clearly paving the way to romanticism.”

Granados’ Second Trio is seldom heard and, so, the composition was a new discovery for the Trio, Kaisla said. “When we were learning it, at first it seemed as though the composer had almost too many short themes coming one after another, but after a while, we discovered that with enough flexibility in the pulse and more of a rhapsodic treatment, the true beauty of the music with a faint Spanish flare began to emerge, and we simply fell in love with the score.”

American composer Schoenfield, who died in 2024, composed “Cafe Music” in the mid–1980s.

“He said that he got the idea for the piece when sitting in for the pianist of the house trio at a restaurant in Minneapolis,” Kaisla said. “He then decided to write ‘high class’ dinner music, ‘which [Schoenfield said] could be played at a restaurant but might also, just barely, find its way to a concert hall.’

“The work includes a variety of popular, folk, classical styles and ‘blue’ notes,” Kaisla continued. “It has highly virtuosic demands for all three instruments, evident in almost every note, and yet it is easy and very attractive for the listener’s ear due to its familiar styles scattered about all three movements.”

Trio Excelsior! was the second prize winner in the Vienna International Music competition in 2025 and is looking forward to making its first recording later this year. For ticket information, visit woodmereartmuseum.org. Woodmere is located at 9201 Germantown Ave. in Chestnut Hill.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.