Busch Trio

Piano Trio

  • Omri Epstein, piano
    Mathieu van Bellen, violin
    Ori Epstein, cello

    Described as playing with ‘effortless musicianship’ (The Times) and great emotional sensitivity, Mathieu van Bellen (violin), Ori Epstein (cello) and Omri Epstein (piano) met in London during their studies at the Royal College of Music. The ensemble’s name, ‘Busch Trio’, is derived first and foremost from Mathieu’s violin, an ‘ex-Adolf Busch’ G.B. Guadagnini (Turin, 1783), but also from Adolf Busch, the shining example for the young trio. In 1935, violinist Adolf Busch, together with Rudolf Serkin (piano) and Hermann Busch (cello), made a legendary recording of Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat major – one of the most important works in the literature for trios, and a core piece in the Busch Trio’s repertoire.

    Mathieu, Ori and Omri won several prizes in international competitions as soloists and graduated from renowned academies of music in Britain. The Busch Trio are the recipients of the most significant prize for musicians in the Netherlands: the Kersjes Prize. They have been the recipients of several other international awards since. In 2018 they were the winners of the NORDMETALL-Ensemble Prize at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival. Their shared passion for music however remained their strongest bond. ‘This trio is the fruit of a friendship that has existed for years’, is how Omri Epstein describes the essentially spontaneous process by which the trio came into being from 2012.

    The Trio’s 2021-22 season highlights include an international tour throughout Israel, Germany, England, Austria, United States, and the Netherlands. The Trio performed in the US with the Melbourne Chamber Music Society, Fort Worth Chamber Music Society and Fullerton Friends of Music. They were featured performers at the Wijnhaven Festival, the Festival van Zeeuwsch-Vlaanderen, the Stuttgart Liederhalle and the Eilat Festival in Israel. In Spring 2022, the Trio will give recitals in England and Austria, before returning to their home country of the Netherlands, where they will perform in collaboration with guest artist Maria Milstein. They will conclude their tour in Heidelberg, Germany.

    Highlights from recent seasons include concerts at the Konzerthaus Berlin, Wigmore Hall in London, the Mozartfest in Würzburg, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Heidelberger Frühling and the Liederhalle Stuttgart. The Busch Trio have performed with the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra led by Karina Canellakis, and with Michael Collins, Bruno Giuranna, Gregor Sigl and Miguel da Silva.

    During the Covid-19 pandemic, Busch Trio released their newest album to critical acclaim, Schubert: Trio Opus 100 – Sontatensatz & Notturno. Described by Gramophone as playing with “…affection and style…with a vivid but always appropriate ear for instrumental color…”, the newest recording by the Trio features three works by Franz Schubert, including his famous Piano Trio no.2. Diapason Magazine hailed the album as an “…exhilarating and thrilling reading…as epic as it is stunning.” Their other recordings include a collaboration with the Alpha Label which have resulted in a series of four CDs covering the complete works of Antonin Dvorák for piano and strings.

    Great names such as the teacher of chamber music Eberhard Feltz, pianist Sir András Schiff and the Artemis Quartet have also contributed to the development of the Busch Trio, as has the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Brussels. The Busch Trio members have now reached a stage in which they primarily learn from each other, during joint rehearsals that largely consist of sharing thoughts and views about music.

    What is also unusual is that the Busch Trio, while not strictly part of the historically informed performance movement, do play on instruments with gut strings. They decided to do so because gut strings provide a different type of articulation and a better sound, which cannot be achieved using modern metal strings due to the greater pressure they require.

    Today the Busch Trio members live in Amsterdam; their extremely intensive rehearsal practice would simply be impossible otherwise. ‘We live like monks in a monastery ‘, they confess. ‘We don’t do this for ourselves, really, but for our best friends’ – comments such as these reflect both their serious attitude and their sense of togetherness. That should be taken quite literally: the Busch Trio also go on holiday together and spend a lot of time together when they are not playing music. Inspired in part by the monastery metaphor, the trio has recently moved into the 450 square meter Schuurkerk in Zaandam (near Amsterdam), a former clandestine church. Together with violinist Maria Milstein, the trio transformed this place of religious worship into a center for chamber music and gave it a new name: MuziekHaven. In addition to offering rehearsal space, the center serves as a venue for concerts that is also available to other ensembles.

    *Updated February 2022

  • October 23, 2020: Busch Trio Releases ‘Schubert: Trio Op. 100; Sonatensatz & Notturno’
    - Outhere Music

  • SCHUBERT Piano Trio No 1. Trout Quintet

    “The Busch Trio’s sympathy with this repertoire feels absolute, their communicative ardour evident throughout the performance.”
    - David Threasher, Gramophone

    BUSCH TRIO’S SCHUBERT: EXPRESSIVE AND WELL-BALANCED PLAYING RELISHES SCHUBERT’S OPTIMISTIC SIDE
    “    Once again, the Busch Trio overturns this propensity by suggesting a composer who had everything to live for, while relishing his full expressive arsenal – the musicians even reinstate the long cut from the development section of the finale to enable the composer’s often joyous inspiration its due.”
    - Julian Haylock, The Strad

    BUSCH TRIO’S SCHUBERT: WORTHY HEIRS TO THEIR ELDERS
    “They offer us here a first-rate technical achievement: clarity, accuracy, balance … We feel the musicians sure of their stylistic choice, made of elegance, of sobriety in the effects, but of commitment in the expression. Adolf Busch would certainly be proud to have lent them his name.”
    – Pierre Carrive, Crescendo Magazine

    DVOŘÁK PIANO QUINTETS & BAGATELLES: BUSCH TRIO, MARIA MILSTEIN, MIGUEL DA SILVA
    “They play the Second Quintet with jewelled precision, full of vivid beauty, thrilling, with snapping rhythms and languid melodic flow. Cellist Ori Epstein shapes the opening melody beautifully, and violist Miguel da Silva is equally fine in both the first and second movements when given his moments in the limelight.”
    – Tim Homfray, The Strad

    YOUTHFUL BUSCH TRIO DELIGHTS AT PHILLIPS COLLECTION
    “In a Sunday afternoon recital presented by the Phillips Collection and the Belgian Embassy at the International Student House of Washington, D.C., this young piano trio demonstrated both technical chops and remarkable musical maturity…the virtuosic achievement was thrilling, and the audience’s enthusiastic response elicited a Dvorak encore, the second movement of the “Dumky” trio.”
    – Charles T. Downey, The Washington Post

    BUSCH TRIO AT WIGMORE HALL
    The Busch Ensemble is a piano trio bursting with far more than promise. […] All players are within their twenties […] but the group already plays as though musically joined at the hip – something to be expected with Epstein and his older brother Omri, the group’ marvellously sensitive pianist. Even during the modest curtain raiser, Schubert’s Sonatensatz of 1812, I quickly lost count of his nimble and subtle variations in touch, though the range only grew wider with the extra firepower summoned for Tchaikovsky’s epic Piano Trio or Beethoven’s D major trio, the ‘Ghost’. […] Beyond the playsers’ individual gifts, what impressed most was the group’s effortless musicianship and unity of thought and attack. The threesome even seemed to be breathing in synch.
    – Geoff Brown, The Times

    REVIEW: DVOŘÁK PIANO TRIOS OP. 21 & 26
    “The Busch are brilliantly alive to its uneasy qualities, and the slowed-down version of the main theme is ardently played by cellist Ori Epstein, while their Trio section has a delightful airiness to it. If in the finale they aren’t quite a match for the Florestan, who are irresistibly light and playful, this is still an impressive achievement.”
    – Harriet Smith, Gramophone

  • 2024-25 Season Sample Programs

    Program I
    Beethoven: Variations in E flat major op.44
    Beethoven: Allegretto in B flat major WoO 39
    Beethoven: Piano Trio in G major op. 121a
    Variations on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu”
    ***
    Schumann: Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor op. 63

    Program II
    Mozart: Piano Trio in B flat major K 502 or
    Haydn: Piano Trio in B flat major Hob.XV No.20
    Charles Ives: Piano Trio
    ***
    Beethoven: Piano Trio in B flat major 0p.97 “Archduke”

    Program III

    Schumann: “Fantasiestücke” Op.88
    Arensky: Piano Trio in D minor Op.32
    ***
    Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor Op.67

    2023-24 SEASON SAMPLE PROGRAMS

    Program I
    F. Bridge: (Fantasy) or
    Debussy: (Trio) or Takemitsu (‘Between Tides’)
    Ravel: Piano Trio in a minor
    Shostakovich: Piano Trio. No. 2

    Program II
    Dvorak: Piano Trio in F minor
    Beethoven: “Archduke’” Trio

    Program III
    Beethoven: Piano Trio, Op. 11
    Dvorak: Piano Trio in g minor
    Ravel: Piano Trio in a minor

    Program IV
    Haydn: Piano Trio in E-flat XV:30 or
    Beethoven Piano Trio No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 44 'Variations on an Original Theme' or
    Schubert: “Notturno”
    Beethoven: Piano Trio, op.70 No. 2
    Rachmaninov: “Trio élégiaque” No. 1 in g minor

    Program V
    Haydn: Trio in E-flat XV:30
    Beethoven: Trio Op. 1 No. 3
    Brahms: Trio in C major

    *Updated January 2024