Grachtenfestival: Feniks Trio & Anuschka Pedano

The Feniks Trio — pianist Max Valkenburcht Dombrowski, violinist Tess Verweij, and cellist Jurre Koopmans — shares the stage with violist Anuschka Pedano. All four musicians are students at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Together, they perform three chamber music masterpieces by Rachmaninoff, Turina, and Schumann. Rachmaninoff wrote his first Trio Élégiaque at the age of eighteen — roughly the age of violinist Tess Verweij. The melancholic tones open the concerto powerfully. Afterwards, Anuschka Pedano joins the trio for Turina's Piano Quartet, which evokes the atmosphere of a Spanish garden in the evening light. The program concludes with Schumann's Piano Quartet: less well-known than his Piano Quintet, but at least as brilliant. The classical form gives all instruments an equal role. In the third movement, an unforgettable cello melody is heard, in which the lowest string is tuned a whole tone lower at the end — resulting in a warm, distinctive timbre.