United States Various, LyricaFest 2026 [2]: Musicians of the Lyrica Program. Lyrica Boston, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 26.5.2026. (LV)
Beethoven – String Trio in C minor, Op.9, No.3 (Thompson Wang [violin], David Carreon [viola], Zac Fung [cello])
Panufnik – Piano Trio No.1, Op.1 (Palette Trio: Lydia Newton [violin], Ruth Stokes [cello], Piotr Kozlowski [piano])
Dvořák – Sextet in A major, Op.48 (Branan Harrison, Hannah Lee [violins], Quinn Robinson, Zoe Slap [violas], Maggie Slap, Olivia Schulte [cellos])
The second of LyricaFest’s three summer concerts – an afternoon program – opened with the Festival’s co-founder Laura Bossert at her most disarming. Introducing the Beethoven String Trio, she described how she had found each of its three players: Thompson Wang heard practicing in a violin shop, David Carreon encountered under similarly fortuitous circumstances, Zac Fung arriving by word of mouth from trusted colleagues. The implication was clear – however they arrived, whether through formal application or happy accident, these were musicians who play as if the music depends on it, which it always does at LyricaFest.
The music that followed justified every instinct. Wang, Carreon and Fung brought the same untamed energy to Beethoven’s String Trio in C minor that the young composer himself had poured into it – astonishing proof that even before the Op.18 quartets, written just two years later, he already understood what the string trio could hold and what it couldn’t. In fact, Op.9 rivals the quartets in richness and ambition, yet Beethoven abandoned the form entirely, sensing the quartet had more to offer. The players seemed to understand this too, squeezing every last drop from the music with brilliant collective commitment. The third movement’s opening crunch was delicious, and the Finale ignited with a triplet motif recalling the last movement of Op.18, No.1, before exploding into the major key with unrestrained joy.
The Palette Trio – who met while studying at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in Coral Gables – brought elegance and bite to Andrzej Panufnik’s Piano Trio No.1. The backstory alone commands attention: composed in 1934, the score was destroyed in the Warsaw Uprising and had to be entirely reconstructed from memory by the composer a year later. Overtones of Shostakovich hover nearby, and the Trio leaned into the music’s quirky, sardonic spirit with evident relish. A big piano solo at the center of the first movement built toward angular, often chaotic terrain before subsiding into uneasy calm. The second movement was long and dour. The third opened with a cello solo that landed every note squarely in tune – and with gusto. Throughout, the Trio made a persuasive case for a piece that deserves to be heard more often.
The afternoon closed with Dvořák’s Sextet in A major, and the moment its opening phrase sounded, summer itself walked into the room. Violinists Branan Harrison and Hannah Lee, violists Quinn Robinson and Zoe Slap and cellists Maggie Slap and Olivia Schulte embraced the music with warmth and humanity from the opening bar. After a cello solo set a more aggressive, personal tone, the first movement’s quiet second theme returned with sheer pleasure. The second movement found the Brahms inside Dvořák – even its happiest moments are shadowed by something wistful – and a passage of pizzicatos was pure magic. The third movement rollicked irresistibly while the fourth moved with delicacy tinged with the violas’ voluptuous burnished timbres, the playing consonant with the music’s searching spirit, the cello variation spoken in an unusually poignant voice. The final presto was met with warm applause and more than a few whoops of delight.
Laurence Vittes
Featured Image: Maggie Slap, Hannah Lee, Branan Harrison, Olivia Schulte, Zoe Slap and Quinn Robinson play Dvořák © Laurence Vittes