Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea are long-time collaborators with Mawhinney and this trio extends that creative relationship. Written for Fidelio Trio in 2022 it has already travelled to Dark Music Days, Iceland. 'In Three’ is in a sense a play on 3 players and 3 movements which vary from intense searing lyricism to graceful dance like poise. The other work in the programme is Felix Mendelssohn’s first Piano Trio in D minor which never fails to impress. Completed in 1839 it is a work praised by Robert Schumann as: ’It is the master trio of our time, as were those of Beethoven in B flat and D, and that of Franz Schubert in E flat in their time.’ In four movements the first and last are in turn tumultuous and relishing in long melodies. The second movement shows off distinctive similarities with Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words and the Scherzo textures ring of A Midsummer’s Night Dream.

FIDELIO TRIO

Darragh Morgan – violin

Tim Gill – cello

Mary Dullea – piano

'The performance is extraordinary: a difficult score performed with supreme confidence and all the electricity of a live performance, caught in a stunning recording'  The Classical Explorer 2025

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, they 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, and internationally at Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Hong Kong Chamber Music Society, Singapore, Bangkok, Porto, Paris, Venice, Florence, Johannesburg, Harare, New York City, San Francisco and Boston. Recent appearances include Dark Music Days Iceland, an extensive USA tour including National Sawdust Brooklyn and ‘Music on the Edge’ Pittsburgh, Cayman International Arts Festival and Little Missenden Festival. 

Their extensive discography includes a Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice and Critics’ Choice 2022 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. 2024 saw a portrait CD of distinguished composer Xiaogang Ye. Other significant 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.

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 University of Iowa, 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, Toshio Hosokawa, Charles Wuorinen, Johannes Maria Staud, Michael Nyman, Gerald Barry, Donnacha Dennehy, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Joe Cutler, Ann Cleare, Judith Weir, Piers Hellawell, Simon Mawhinney, David Fennessy, Kevin Volans. Gavin Higgins, Linda Buckley, Tom Coult, John Harbison, Sam Perkin, Sebastian Adams, Claudia Molitor, Shirley Thompson, Richard Baker, Robert Saxton, Simon Bainbridge and Alexander Goehr.

Artists the Fidelio Trio have performed with include Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Michael Collins and Julian Bliss (clarinet), Richard Watkins (horn), Rachel Roberts (viola), author Alexander McCall Smith, T.S. Eliot prizewinning poet Sinéad Morrissey and actor Adrian Dunbar. They have developed work in collaboration with Rambert Dance Company and feature in the film of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Sea of Troubles with Yorke Dance Project.

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

www.fideliotrio.com

Photo credit: Christopher Baines