SF Munich Trio
In a judicious sampling of styles and periods, they offered an evening of music-making that was provocative, professional, and occasionally profound.
–SF Classical Voice
Saturday November 5th, 8:00pm
Occidental Center for the Arts
With a focus on variety this season, we were intrigued by this instrumental combination. Upon listening to a CD, the intrigue turned into pressing desire to host them. With cello sonatas, bassoon duos, and trios, this group plays with stunning perfection in all formations, leaving the ear with the feeling of having sampled a great cornucopia of sound and timbre.
Rust and Edelmann have played together in duo and larger chamber-music groups for over 30 years. By offering either full evening concerts with well crafted duo repertoire for this unusual instrument combination (Mozart, Rossini and others) or by adding piano and including works especially composed for them as a trio or by playing evenings with a String-Trio and Bassoon (works from the classical period), these outstanding musicians have garnered international attention.
Married 34 years, Rust and Edelmann met when the Bay Area-born Rust won a scholarship to play in a youth orchestra in Belgium. At that time the German-born Edelmann was a mathematic student and hobby bassoonist. After the couple met, they spent the following Christmas together playing duets, and the rest is history. As for being a "hobby bassoonist," Edelmann would go on to become the Principal Bassoonist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (1977-2004).
"Through classical music, we want to reach people's hearts, from heart to heart, feeling to feeling, to spread harmony, peace, understanding in the world, as well as express the fun of living, singing, dancing, playing," said Rust. "And when one is sad, music is a great comfort."
Praised by Carlo Maria Giulini for her "exceptional musicality," the American cellist Rebecca Rust, a native of California, U.S.A. received her first piano lessons with her mother at the age of five and began cello lessons with Margaret Rowell, Cello Professor at the San Francisco Conservatory and the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford, at the age of nine.
Margaret Rowell: "Rebecca Rust is one of the most talented cellists that I have had the pleasure of teaching. Blessed with a beautiful ear and facility, she has used these gifts as tools to dig deep into the music intself, thereby giving her listeners a profound musical experience. Rebecca Rust is a brilliant cellist."
At age thirteen she was a prizewinner of the Mendelssohn Competition and at age fourteen a prizewinner in the California Cello Club Competition. The first prizes in the "Mu Phi Epsilon" Competition and the Berkeley Piano Club made it possible for her to begin studies in New York with Bernard Greenhouse (Casals' pupil and cellist of the Beaux-Arts-Trio).
Bernard Greenhouse: "Rebecca Rust is what I consider, one of the important young cellists to come from the American musical scene."
She became a member of the Christmas String Orchestra under the direction of Alexander Schneider, and received a scholarship to study with the Lenox Quartet.
After graduating "cum laude" in New York, she continued her studies with Paul Szabo (Casals' pupil and cellist of the Vegh Quartet) at the Cologne College of Music, earning there a soloist diploma "with honors." During this time she was also solo cellist of the "Orchestre Mondiale des Jeunesses Musicales" under Karel Ancerl. Master classes with Mstislav Rostropovich followed in the USA (as one of five participants from over one hundred applicants) and in Basel, Switzerland, where in the final concerts she appeared as soloist, playing the Lalo Concerto, with the Basel Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Mstislav Rostropovich. This was followed by solo concerts and radio productions in Europe, the USA, and in Japan (since 1992 regular concert tours with concerts in Tokyo, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kobe, Sendai, Mito, Hiroshima, Miyako (Okinawa), and in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, including appearances as soloist with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra (Sergiu Celibidache was the patron of her debut in Tokyo's Suntory Hall in October 1992).
At the invitation of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rebecca Rust played concerts in Africa (Morocco, Tunisia), Poland (Warsaw, Stettin, Danzig), Prague (concerts and radio productions for Prague Radio), Kobe and Tokyo (memorial concerts for the victims of the Hanshin earthquake of 1995) and Israel in February 2007.
Rebecca Rust plays a Master-Cello by William Forster (1791), which formerly was owned by Prince Charles, who also played on it.
Friedrich Edelmann grew up in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He studied with Alfred Rinderspacher (Prof. in Mannheim), Klaus Thunemann (Prof. in Hamburg-Hannover-Berlin), and Milan Turkovic (Prof. in Vienna). After his diploma in mathematics ("Staatsexamen") in Heidelberg, he joined the orchestra of the "Pfalztheater" in Kaiserslautern for three years and was 1977 - 2004 Principal Bassoonist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra ("MÃnchner Philharmoniker"), from 1979 until 1996 under Maestro Sergiu Celibidache and from 1999 until 2004 under Maestro James Levine. He won several first prizes in German national competitions and was a member of the World-Orchestra of Jeunesses Musicales under Karel Ancerl, when he met the American cellist Rebecca Rust.
Together with his wife Rebecca Rust, Friedrich Edelmann now plays many concerts in America, Europe and Japan including radio- and TV-productions. As a teacher he gave courses for bassoon and chamber music in Venezuela, U.S.A., Moscow and Tokyo, Tel Aviv Israel and at VILLA MUSICA in Germany.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany supported concert-tours of solo chamber music by Friedrich Edelmann and Rebecca Rust to Prague, Warsaw, Sczecin, Gdansk, Tunis, Rabat and Casablanca as well as to Japan (Concerts for the Memory of the victims of the Hanshin-Earthquake in 1995 and as soloists together with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra) and to Israel.