Taliesin Trio, Malcolm Bilson present concerts this week

The Taliesin Trio, from left, Ellen Jewett, Xak Bjerken and Elizabeth Simkin, returns to Barnes Hall Sept. 16.

The Taliesin Trio returns to Barnes Hall after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus to present a concert of three works Sunday, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. Pianist and Cornell assistant professor of music Xak Bjerken, violinist Ellen Jewett and cellist Elizabeth Simkin have selected compositions by Zoltán Kodály, James Matheson and Bedrich Smetana.

Jewett and Simkin open the program with Kodály's Duo for violin and cello, op. 7. The trio then tackles Matheson's Falling, variations for violin, cello and piano, which was premiered June 11, 2000, on the Chamber Music Series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Matheson completed his doctor of musical arts degree at Cornell this past spring.

The second half of the program is devoted to the Piano Trio in G Minor, op. 15, Smetana's first important chamber work, written at the age of 31. The trio, along with Dvorák's "Dumky," belongs to the most important works of the Czech chamber music repertoire.

On Sept. 20 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall, pianist and Cornell music Professor Malcolm Bilson will perform works by Beethoven, Clementi and Schubert.

Bilson, on the Cornell faculty since 1968, has been performing Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven on replicas and original period pianos for the past 30 years, and he has been a key contributor to the restoration of the early piano to the concert stage and to recordings of the "mainstream" repertory.

In recent years Bilson has been focusing his attention increasingly on the piano literature of the 19th century, and on the program at this concert, he will play the Schubert C-Minor Piano Sonata, D. 958, the final sonata in his seven-disc traversal of the complete Schubert piano sonatas for Hungaroton Records. The program also will include Muzio Clementi's Sonata in F Minor, op. 13, no. 6, and the Beethoven Sonata in D Major, op. 10, no. 3. All three of these works will be performed in concerts in Europe next month.