Composers' Workshop: The Fidelio Trio

The …'virtuosic Fidelio Trio'… (Sunday Times) are Darragh Morgan (violin), Tim Gill (cello) and Mary Dullea (piano). Shortlisted for the 2016 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, The Fidelio Trio broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 3, RTÉ Lyric FM, WQXR, and have been featured on a Sky Arts documentary.

Since their debut at London’s Southbank Centre, The Fidelio Trio have regularly appeared at the Wigmore Hall and Kings Place, at festivals including Spitalfields, Cheltenham, St. Magnus and Huddersfield. In Ireland they regularly perform at National Concert Hall, Dublin, Kilkenny Festival and Belfast Festival as well as Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Hong Kong Chamber Music Society, Singapore, Bangkok, Porto, Paris, Venice, Florence, Johannesburg, Harare, New York City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Boston.

Their extensive discography includes most recently a Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice of Chamber Music by E J Moeran, a composer with whom they are closely associated and the release of premiere recordings on Mode Records of music by Gerald Barry. Forthcoming in 2022 are a portrait CD of Ye Xiaogang and Robert Saxton’s recently commissioned piano trio. Other releases include 2 French albums of Ravel and Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Chausson and Satie; Philip Glass Head On & Pendulum on Orange Mountain; Korngold and Schoenberg (Verklärte Nacht arr. Steuermann) for Naxos; the complete Michael Nyman Piano Trios for MN Records; multiple releases on NMC, Delphian Records including portrait CDs for composers such as Luke Bedford, Piers Hellawell and Michael Zev Gordon. Their previous release of French Piano Trios for Resonus was also a Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice.

...delicacy and flow are the watchwords across the album, as you hear again in the Fauré Trio, whose first movement’s expertly moulded super-long lines are a study in sustained tension....one to savour. Gramophone

The Fidelio Trio have given masterclasses at Peabody Conservatory, Curtis Institute, NYU, Central Conservatory Beijing, and Stellenbosch Conservatorium South Africa. They have been artists-in-residence at St. Patrick’s College Dublin City University, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the State University of New York, SUNY and Tufts University, Boston.

Composers that the Trio have premiered music by include Anna Clyne, Robert Saxton, Toshio Hosokawa, Charles Wuorinen, Johannes Maria Staud, Michael Nyman, Gerald Barry, Donnacha Dennehy, Joe Cutler, Ann Cleare, Simon Bainbridge, Judith Weir, Alexander Goehr, David Fennessy and Kevin Volans. 

Inspirational musicians The Fidelio Trio have collaborated with include Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Richard Watkins (horn), Joan Rodgers and Patricia Rozario (soprano), Rachel Roberts (viola), and with spoken word, author Alexander McCall Smith, T.S. Eliot prizewinning poet Sinéad Morrissey and actor Adrian Dunbar.

They often perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto including recently with KZN Philharmonic Orchestra South Africa and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and are Artistic Directors of their annual Winter Chamber Music Festival at Belvedere House, Dublin City University.