Supernova: competition for promising chamber music ensembles

Welcome to the 19th edition of Klarafestival! The theme Crossroads - Come Together keenly evokes the convergence of the audience, the artists and their inspiring concerts. A meeting place where the leading lights of international classical music enter into dialogue with challenging creations and young talent. 

The inspiration for this edition comes from festival artist Claron McFadden. As she told us in an interview, “I stand at a crossroads where styles and generations cross, meet, and collide”. This notion forms the core of the programme. We hope you will enjoy Klarafestival as a sanctuary of hope, polyphony and beauty in all its forms. As a place where the familiar takes on new meaning and where new experiences take you by surprise. 

Jan Raes, chairman

Joost Fonteyne, intendant

Chantal Pattyn, manager Klara

We’re rolling out the red carpet for the joint winners of the Supernova 2024 competition: The Aglica Trio and the Susato Trio. Continuing our annual tradition, Klarafestival, together with a dozen or so classical music programmers, have been searching for fresh musical talent. At the final in DE SINGEL, two winners shared the top prize. They each receive not only airplay on Radio Klara and Musiq’3, but also win a concert tour of Belgium, beginning at Klarafestival. Meet the Aglica Trio and the Susato Trio, two ensembles with a unique take on the chamber music repertoire.  

The Aglica Trio

The Aglica Trio consists of flute, viola and harp. A sublime combination, though not a lot of music has been written for it. Nevertheless, the trio knows which musical pearls to select from the limited repertoire. During this laureates’ concert, they take to the stage with a highly personal programme. They open with works by two composers with whom they have personally collaborated: Slices of Life by Francisco Fontes (1993) and From the Song of Amergin by Hilary Tann (1947-2023). The ensemble completes the recital with the enigmatic Sonata for flute, viola and harp by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), a work that has over the years become a staple of their repertoire.    

It is no coincidence that Debussy’s sonata takes such a prominent place at the concert. Not only is it the first composition the Aglica Trio ever played together: it is also one of the earliest pieces written for flute, viola and harp. Quickly recognized as a monument of music, it is still considered one of the most comprehensive examples of the genre. Debussy wrote the work three years before his death, and dedicated it to his second wife, Emma Bardac. To call Debussy an innovator is to state the obvious. He is often seen as the 20th century’s musical starting point, throwing aside what had gone before and creating his own musical language. Debussy was searching for a free and spontaneous expressiveness, independent of existing structures; trying to create ‘something different’, he said. The result was a colourful new language, suggestive, delicate and dreamlike. A tonal idiom that aptly fits the palette of flute, viola and harp.   

The repertoire for flute, viola and harp has expanded since the early 20th century. The Portuguese composer Francisco Fontes has also made his contribution. At the request of the Aglica Trio, he composed Slices of Life. Not easy, he told us, to write for instruments with such diverse registers and characters. The composer got to know the trio at the Guildhall School of Music, where he, a PhD student, is studying links between music and the literary works of his fellow-countryman, Fernando Pessoa. On  receiving the commission, he knew at once where to begin: Slices of Life is inspired by Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. This is an astonishing compilation of 481 diary excerpts, written across twenty years, a collection of musings on life. Fontes set to work with the book: each of the composition’s seven parts represents an excerpt from the diary. He expresses Pessoa’s words instrumentally, and even steps onto the stage to recite from the text.    

Composer Hilary Tann was also inspired by creative writing, in her From the Song of Amergin (1995), based on a fragment of text from an old Celtic song: ‘I am the wind upon the sea, I am a ray of sun, I am the hawk on the cliff’. Of the five musical sections that she composed, the three central episodes suggest the natural world: the harp is the wind, the viola refers to the sunbeam, and the flute represents the hawk. The composer begins and ends with the mantra ‘I am’, the essence of Being.

The Susato Trio

The Susato Trio are clear about what they wish to bring to the stage: a mixture of standard repertoire and forgotten masterpieces. No coincidence then, that their name alludes to another music provider, the Antwerp composer, instrumentalist and music publisher Tielman Susato (1510/15-after 1570). Today, they have selected two lesser-known compositions from the trio repertoire, albeit by established composers: the Piano Trio No. 2 by Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) and the Piano Trio No. 6 by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

Beethoven wrote his fifth and sixth piano trios in 1808, at the estate of Marie von Erdödy, to whom he dedicated both compositions. Although the trios were composed in tandem, history has treated them very differently: from the beginning, the sixth trio was overshadowed by its counterpart. Is this because, in the sixth, we do not hear the typical, heroic Beethoven of that time? With publication of his music at full strength, he was busy writing, together with other works, his fifth symphony, followed by the sixth symphony (‘Pastoral’). In comparison, the Piano Trio No. 6 does sound significantly different. Here we have the earlier, more delicate and classic Beethoven at work, with Haydn and Mozart perhaps looking on. This is heard, for example, in the slow introduction – a Haydn trademark – that incidentally returns towards the end of the first movement. Moreover, this piano trio has no introspective, slow movement. The main body of the work consists of two allegretto movements. In the fourth movement, the music’s character undergoes a sharp change: we end in spectacular fashion, as befits a 19th century finale. We hear, in all its glory, the typical expressiveness of the Beethoven of 1808.  

Bohuslav Martinů’s Piano Trio No. 2 is another composition not often heard in the concert hall. Let us jump ahead in time for a moment: Martinů wrote his trio in 1950. The Czech had lived a colourful life; he was well-acquainted with most of the twentieth century’s musical hotspots. In Paris, he explored jazz, the music of Igor Stravinsky and Les Six. Later, after stopovers in Switzerland and elsewhere, in 1941 he was forced to flee to the United States where he familiarised himself with transatlantic musical trends. Martinů was a composer with a finger in every pie. Czechoslovak by birth, he was international by nature, and held the whole gamut of repertoires in his pen.    

Admittedly, this amalgam of styles makes Martinů’s music not always easy to grasp. However, his second piano trio is, in that respect, an exception. The musical language is comprehensible, with elements borrowed from 19th century colleagues. The romantic melody lines in the strings remind one of the musical idiom of Schumann or Beethoven. This could never be Martinů, however, without the introduction of a Czech musical flavour. This occurs in the third movement, when the rhythms become increasingly boisterous, with typical syncopations and a playful handling of the metre. This unusual blending of romantic and rhythm reveals Martinů’s greatest strength: he knows better than anyone how to bring together the most diverse sound worlds, to create his very own, unique musical vocabulary.  

Jenske Vanhaelemeersch, translated by Patrick Goddard

Aglica Trio 

Flutist Carys Gittins, violist Agnieszka Żyniewicz and harpist Lise Vandersmissen met in 2017 at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Their respective Welsh, Polish and Belgian roots come together in the Aglica Trio. The musicians have now been touring Europe for several years. They combine the experimental character of contemporary classical music with the extensive trio repertoire. They like to highlight underrepresented composers and make contemporary classical music accessible to young audiences, including in the form of workshops. 

Susato Trio 

The Antwerp-based Susato Trio was founded in 2022 by violinist Sarah Bayens, cellist Mikko Pablo and pianist Markiyan Popil. Their name is a nod to Tielman Susato, the 16th-century composer from Antwerp who founded the first music publishing house in the Low Countries. Just like him, the trio aim to reach the widest possible audience with music. In this case: not only established repertoire for piano trio, but also hidden gems that have unjustly fallen between the cracks of history. The ensemble, which says it likes to colour outside the lines, won the Génération Classique competition and the first prize 'Mathilde Horlait Dapsens' in 2022. 

Slices of Life - original text and translation