The Feininger Trio
In 2005, Adrian Oetiker (piano) and the Berlin Philharmonic musicians Christoph Streuli (violin) and David Riniker (violoncello) founded the Feininger Trio. The Trio’s namesake, the painter, graphic designer and co-founder of the Bauhaus, Lyonel Feininger, whose Berlin studio was not far from the ensemble’s rehearsal venue in the Berlin-Zehlendorf district, is a person they feel closely connected to, both as a personality and in his work.
In addition to stylistic diversity, the three musicians base their interpretations on tonal warmth, expressivity and refinement, but also on exploring the border areas. Critics have repeatedly praised the wide spectrum of nuances and timbres, but also the expressive and gripping playing, even the “intoxicating performance” (Fono Forum).
The Feiningers can be heard regularly on concert stages in Berlin, Hamburg, Salzburg, Munich and Valencia as well as in smaller concert cycles such as in Liestal, Solothurn or Bayreuth. In recent years, the trio has also been invited to festivals in Baden-Baden and Zurich, to the Beethovenfest Bonn and to the Prague and Heidelberg Spring Festivals.
The Trio has made a name for itself with its dramaturgically well thought-out programmes. After focussing on Bohemia, France and Russia, they have just completed a Brahms cycle which relates his three trios to works by the younger Viennese composers Zemlinsky, Korngold and Krenek. In addition to preparing a Schubert cycle, the Feiningers are also working on an exciting interdisciplinary project with composer Konstantia Gourzi, choreographer Sommer Ulrickson and set designer Alexander Polzin. A first version will be performed in May 2023 as part of the Duisburg Philharmonic’s “Eigenzeit Festival”.
The trio also regularly collaborates with the actress Katharina Thalbach. On the occasion of the 2017 Easter Festival in Baden-Baden, they designed an atmospheric programme with the motto “…o sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe”, featuring compositions by Schubert and Chopin as well as poetry by Shakespeare, Rilke, Benn, Lasker-Schüler and others.
The Feiningers’ lively recording activity is documented on the Avi-music label: Works by Smetana, Suk and Dvořák (2013), trios by Debussy and Ravel (2017), the programme with Katharina Thalbach (2018) and in 2021 the first CD of the Brahms cycle with the trio op. 101 and the Zemlinsky Trio op. 3, created in co-production with Deutschlandfunk Kultur. The cycle will be completed by the end of the year 2022, the second CD (Brahms trio op. 87 and Korngold), having been released in September 2022.
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Formidable – an expressive and gripping playing!
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- © Irène Zandel