The Steans Piano Trio Found and Renews Instant Kismet at Ravinia

What’s In a Name?

By Kyle MacMillan

Kismet has a way of striking at unexpected times, and that is exactly what happened when three fellows at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute (RSMI) happened to be put together with a violist to perform Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in 2015.

Though the three alumni of the Curtis Institute of Music were acquainted with each other from their time at the prestigious Philadelphia school, they had never played together previously and had no particular interest in being part of a piano trio. Or so they thought.

The future Steans Piano Trio — violinist Eunice Kim, pianist Xiaohui Yang, and cellist Oliver Aldort — in their July 18, 2015, performance of Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 at Ravinia Steans Music Institute with violist Leah Ferguson

All that changed when they began rehearsing together, and the young artists immediately found themselves captivated by the collaboration. Indeed, the three were so taken with the experience that four years later they decided to make the happenstance assemblage into a permanent group.

“We never spoke much in rehearsals,” said pianist Xiaohui Yang. “Whatever each other did, we were all for it. All of us were listening to each very carefully. It’s the best feeling you can ever get in chamber music. It’s like you found your soulmate.”

Added violinist Eunice Kim: “The three of us had this moment of: ‘Oh, my gosh. I think we need to keep playing together.’ ”

The Steans Piano Trio, as the group became known, will perform a concert November 17 in Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall as part of the festival’s 2023–24 Fall/Spring Series. “It’s always nice and special to be back where all of us played together,” Yang said. “Ravinia is a very special place for all of us.”

Naturally, one of the Steans Piano Trio’s first performances after forming the group in 2019 (with a nod to where the connection took root) was in Bennett Gordon Hall stage at Ravinia, the home stage of Ravinia Steans Music Institute.

The concert opens with the Piano Trio in C major (1797) by Joseph Haydn, one of the pioneers of the form. He wrote 28 mature works for the combination; this one, which dates from the height of the classical style and the composer’s immensely popular London period, is among the most virtuosic. “It’s such a charming piece, and it creates this very nice contrast from the rest of the program,” Yang said.

The program’s centerpiece is Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, op. 67, written during the horrors of World War II, which Kim said, “you can hear very clearly in all four movements.” The 1943–44 piece is also a lamentation over the death of the composer’s cherished friend Ivan Sollertinsky. “It’s a clear depiction of how he writes,” Kim said. “It’s both beautiful and disturbing to play.”

Kim called the concert’s final work, Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio (1914), “the masterpiece of piano trios.” She believes it aptly embodies the composer’s desire for what he called surprise and symmetry. “There’s just a great use of dissonance and a range of dynamics going from extreme delicacy to shattering climactic moments, which makes you hear such colorful exoticism and imagery in his music,” she said.

Each of the members of the piano trio studied at the Steans Institute for two years, with their fellowships overlapping in 2015. The internationally known summer program draws young artists who are typically finishing undergraduate or graduate studies and have begun their professional careers.

“I was at an age where I could soak up all kinds of information, probably better than I would have if I were much younger,” said Kim. “So, I feel like I went at a really good stage in my life where I needed the kind of nurturing that [RSMI] provided.”

Though the three musicians didn’t know each other well when then they were grouped together, she believes it helped that they had similar educational backgrounds. “We immediately had this bond and trust already,” Kim said, “and the same kind of musical training, coming from the same institution. That glued us immediately.”

Despite the rapport that the three musicians established, each went on to advance successful individual careers that kept them apart after their stints at the Steans Institute:

Kim has been a member of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota since 2017 and solos with the group frequently. “It’s kind of a dream job,” she said. She also performs regularly as a soloist elsewhere, including an appearance earlier this year with the Shreveport Symphony in Louisiana.
Yang, who lives in the Seattle area, has a multifaceted career that includes chamber music, solo recitals, and concerto appearances. She returned to the Steans Institute in 2019 and 2021–23 as a collaborative pianist, working with the fellows and helping them prepare duo sonatas for performances, among other tasks.
Oliver Aldort became the youngest member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2015 when he joined the august ensemble’s cello section. During the 2019–20 season, he was promoted to assistant principal cellist and became principal cellist of the associated Boston Pops orchestra.

It was not clear the three musicians would ever get back together. But, in 2019, they caught up with each other and all had the same thought: Wouldn’t it be nice to play together again? “Of course, we’re all in love with the trio repertoire,” Yang said. “But it’s also just that you don’t always find people that you get along with so well with in music-making—that really you don’t need words to describe what you do.”

Of course, the trio had to figure out what to call itself, and the three musicians didn’t have to look far for an idea. With the enthusiastic permission of Ravinia Festival officials, they simply adopted the name of the institute where the trio came together (itself named by and in honor of the Steans family of longtime Ravinia leaders and benefactors).

Kim was associated with Astral Artists, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia that mentors up-and-coming artists, and it helped the group get a few opportunities that year to perform. The trio also made an appearance at the Ravinia Board of Trustees’ annual meeting in December 2019 among the inaugural performances.

According to the violinist, the motivation was simple: “Hopefully, we can make something of it. If not, whatever. But let’s see what we can do.”

But just as the ensemble was gaining momentum, it ran headlong into the COVID-19 shutdown, and all its plans had to be put on hold. The trio did a couple of small concerts in 2021, including a return to Chicago for a featured streaming performance during WFMT-FM’s 70th anniversary celebrations, but only now is it beginning to rev up again.

Because of the three musicians’ busy individual careers, the Steans Piano Trio isn’t envisioned as a full-time commitment. But they would like to go on the road and perform a week or two of concerts together each season.

“It’s very possible for all three of us to carve out a handful of weeks a year,” Kim said, “and if we could gather a tour, we would more than love to do that.” ■

Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic for the Denver Post from 2000 through 2011. He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for such publications and websites as the Chicago Sun-Times, Early Music America, Opera News, and Classical Voice of North America.