The Phaeton Piano Trio

The Phaeton Piano Trio plays at the North Carolina Museum of Art on Wednesday, October 14, in the East Building's SECU Auditorium. It's a chamber music program built around three names most of us know by heart: Schubert, Beethoven, and Saint-Saëns. The Beethoven piece is the Archduke Trio, and the Saint-Saëns is Piano Trio No. 2.

The trio is made up of three German musicians based in Weimar: Friedemann Eichhorn on violin, Peter Hörr on cello, and Florian Uhlig on piano. They formed in 2017 and have played across Europe and beyond since then. Their first North American tour was in 2020, and their US debut was at the Library of Congress, where Eichhorn played the library's Kreisler Guarneri del Gesu. They took their name from Phaeton, the son of the Greek sun god Helios. Their repertoire runs from the classical masters to contemporary composers, so this program sits right in the middle of that range.

Each of them brings a fair amount of weight to the stage. Eichhorn is a professor of violin at the Weimar Hochschule für Musik 'Franz Liszt' and the artistic director of the Kornberg Academy. Hörr is a founding member of the Mozart Piano Quartet and a professor of cello at the Leipzig Hochschule für Musik und Theater 'Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. Uhlig is an honorary member of the London Royal Academy of Music and the artistic director of the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival. Between them, they've put in two decades of global artistry.

The concert starts at 7 PM at the NCMA, 2110 Blue Ridge Rd., West Raleigh. Tickets are $32 for general admission, $29 for members, and $25 for college students.