Trio for flute, viola, and cello, Op. 61, No. 5
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Merrilee Elliott, flute
Henry Haffner, viola Rebecca Kiekenapp, cello |
This trio was written in the fall of 1986 for a concert at the Headley-Whitney Museum in Lexington, Kentucky by the Ashland Trio, Merrilee Elliott, Catherine McGlasson, and Roberta Guthrie. After more than a dozen performances of the Serenade, Op. 8, adapted for the flute, Elliott challenged Baber to stop complaining about the displaced lowest violin notes and write a trio especially for the Ashland Trio, as constituted. A first draft of movement I was abandoned as too modernist for the group’s proclivities and purpose, providing music for weddings and informal occasions. The result was a work which returned to the tuneful spontaneity of the composer’s 1950’s style. In three movements, the work is not prohibitively demanding, but does require a level of facility representative of the Ashland Trio’s professional caliber.
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