The Shelter Island Friends of Music are back: Concert by The Merz Trio was the first in two years

A truly meaningful event happened at the Presbyterian Church on  November 6.

It was the Island debut of the sublime  Merz Trio performing  at the first Friends of Music concert in  almost two years. The nearly sold-out hall attested to Island  music lovers’ desire to hear live music.

The Merz, a piano, violin and cello trio, performed a demanding program of Webern, Haydn, Schumann and Brahms. The turbulent moments  of the Haydn E Minor Piano Trio yielded to the  transcendent melodies of the Brahms B Major trio.

And the program ended with the group’s arrangement of the Schumann song “Widmung,” an evocative expression of the romantic power of 19th century music. 

The Merz is an exquisitely talented group of young musicians who are the resident trio at the New England Conservatory of Music, and who have recently won the prestigious 2021 Naumburg Chamber Music  Competition.

For Islanders who may be in the city next month, their next concert will be in Manhattan on December 7th (2 p.m.) at the Merkin Hall near Lincoln Center, where they will perform the beloved trios of Faure and Ravel.