Urban Nocturnes Explores Joseph Haydn's Chamber Music at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral

Audio Transcript

Greg Kostraba: This is KBACH’s Heart of the Arts podcast. I’m Greg Kostraba. Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Phoenix presents a Composer Fest featuring the music of Joseph Haydn, April 24th and 25th. The first of these concerts features the ensemble Urban Nocturnes with a selection of the composer’s chamber music. Two members of Urban Nocturnes, flutist and KBACH host Viviana Cumplido Wilson and violinist Karen Sinclair are in the studio to talk about the program. Welcome to both of you.

Karen Sinclair: Thank you.

Viviana Cumplido Wilson: Thank you for having us.

Greg: Joseph Haydn did so much to develop the symphony, string quartet, piano trio, piano sonata, but when I look at the 2026 KBACH Top 100 Most Wanted list, I see 10 pieces by Beethoven, 6 by Mozart, and zero by Haydn. So how can a composer who had such a profound influence on music and wrote in a similar style to Mozart and Beethoven fail to capture the attention of the general public? Or maybe is there something else going on?

Karen: Well, I think that Haydn’s music can be deceptively simple. It is actually extremely difficult to put together and play. So I think for a lot of reasons it’s actually a really good exercise for ensembles to play his music, but it’s very challenging and often we don’t have the time to really get his music up to the level that it needs to be in order to be done service to.

Viviana: Yes, and like Karen just said, I think because it does appear to be simple and maybe even easy, I think a lot of times when musicians are preparing chamber music, they think, “Oh, we want something with a little bit more meat to it that we can sink our teeth into.” But the reality is that playing this very sort of deceptively simplistic music is quite challenging and really fun. I think that’s one of the things that’s nice about playing Haydn is that there’s always, for the most part, like a very uplifting spirit to it. I’m glad that they’ve chosen Haydn to spotlight because he’s written so much and in terms of chamber music, you could spend your whole life trying to get through all of Haydn’s chamber works.

Greg: Is this the first Composer Fest that is being presented at Music at Trinity?

Karen: Yes. We’re hoping this will be an annual event. Eric, the music director at Trinity, approached me about a year ago with this idea and we sort of sat down and made a list of composers that might be good candidates. Haydn, of course, we talked about Fauré, Vaughan Williams, Reger. I think we were trying to find a composer that wrote for all different types of vocal combinations and instrumental combinations. We weren’t really sure what the weekend was going to look like, who was going to be performing, what permutations. And we ultimately landed on Haydn, I think, just because it is the first festival, we wanted someone who was going to be really accessible. Haydn’s music is just something that anyone that is familiar or not with classical music, your ears just perk up and your brain just sort of goes into overdrive and it’s just a really great experience for your mind and for your body to listen to it, no matter what it is. We wanted to have music that could bring new people in the door as well, and Haydn really seemed to be the one that would do that.

Viviana: And I think actually one of the things that makes this Haydn festival so appealing to us as an ensemble, Urban Nocturnes operates in a modular capacity where we’re constantly picking repertoire, that works for different instrumentations because of the musicians that we have in our ensemble. We rarely ever play all six of us together. We’re always putting together, different permutations of this group and Haydn’s chamber works are perfect for us in terms of being able to adapt, to create a program that includes everyone in our ensemble and not in some sort of weird way where we’re doing like arrangements of music to try to accommodate what we bring to the table. It’s like, no, all of this actually works for us. It’s great.

Greg: And the program, to your point, begins with a piano sonata and then the piano trio, flute trio, and finally string quartet. How did you decide on the sequence for this program, Karen?

Karen: I wanted it to flow well in terms of complexity and also variety. I think that the string quartets being at the end, those are his most advanced in terms of when they were composed, pieces. And I wanted each category to sort of have its own progression as well. So we have movements from early, middle, and late parts of his composing career spanning forty years. So hopefully that will be the case. It did take a while for me to actually think it through and design it so that it would flow well and not be disruptive and fragmented, but I think we’ve come up with something that will work.

Greg: And just so our listeners know, you’re not playing entire string quartets or entire flute trios because if you did, the whole program would be like six hours long.

Karen: Right, or we would have to limit it to only a couple of selections. So I really wanted it to be more like small plates or cocktails and hors d'oeuvres rather than a big, heavy meal.

Viviana: That’s right. Haydn potpourri.

Karen: Yeah. So each category has a group of single movements, probably from three to five minutes each.

Greg: Are there any particular movements, Vivi, let’s start with you, that really get your attention, they get you thinking, “Boy, I’m so glad I’m playing this on this concert?”

Viviana: One of the things I’m really looking forward to in the London Trio that we’re playing that is for flute, violin, and cello. Oftentimes these London Trios get sort of sidelined as background music, and they deserve proper spotlight. And so I’m really looking forward to elevating a lot of this music and really get to explore how wonderful this music is and present it in a way that really, does it justice like it deserves to be mainstream.

Greg: And that’s an interesting point too because those pieces in particular, I know, can be seen that way, but there’s so much intricacy to them, but they’re so pleasant as well, you kind of don’t necessarily even think about what it takes for the composer to be able to create these gems.

Viviana: And not just, these gems, but so many gems. I mean, it’d be a miracle for anybody to write one of these things, and then to have so many to choose from. I think Karen has done a really excellent job of trying to curate this program because when you’re dealing with such a well of wonderful music, it’s really hard to just sort of pare it down to a few things for us to perform in and in an hour.

Karen: Haydn is very remarkable in that he has such prolific output, but almost every single thing that he wrote is so carefully crafted and sensitive in terms of construction and just really high-quality writing.

Viviana: Yeah, nothing ever comes off as a quick job, even if sometimes the way we present it doesn’t lend itself to really honoring it. I think everything that he wrote was really, like she said, carefully considered and thought out, but because it is so pleasant, it’s easy to forget that there is actually a lot going on in this music.

Greg: Karen, is there a particular favorite of yours on the program that you just can’t wait to get your teeth into to play?

Karen: Well, the first piano trio selection is interesting because it’s so early. It’s actually the first, the very first piano trio from maybe the 1750s and it is so lean that it’s really not ever played on the concert stage. You would only really hear it in anthologies or recordings. But I think that it’s just so interesting to start there and then to see how his writing develops, especially with regards to the development of the pianoforte, writing for harpsichord to that. You can really experience how he took advantage of the changes in instruments and similarly with the string quartets. The second selection we’re playing, the first movement of Opus 20, Number 2, that really marks a turning point in his string quartet writing where he was going from really just having the first violin doing really the heavy lifting as far as all of the technical fireworks and the melodic material, the other three instruments being mainly accompaniment. But he really with this piece started exploring how to be more conversational and give the instruments equal responsibility. The roles are still slightly defined, but it’s much more of an equal opportunity way. And then finally, when we get to the Opus 74, Number 3, that’s just like the pinnacle of exciting conversational writing where the quartet is really being heard as one instrument rather than four.

Greg: Let me ask a question about Trinity Cathedral now. Urban Nocturnes is in residence at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Phoenix, and for folks who may have never seen a concert there, tell us why the cathedral makes such a good place to perform and listen to chamber music.

Viviana: It has a wonderful acoustic for one thing. It’s very satisfying to perform in that space, it’s very flattering. You can really hear everything well in the audience. So it’s an ideal experience for listening and chamber music too because while a larger ensemble this might be a little bit too live of a space to have that much going on, for chamber music it’s perfect because you can hear all of the intricate writing of all these different works that we’ll be playing. And it’s also a beautiful space just aesthetically. It’s a beautiful setting for any sort of concert. We feel really lucky and are grateful to Music at Trinity for really sort of investing in us as an ensemble.

Karen: The other aspect of why we like playing there is actually just where it’s located, just downtown, and we’re very much enthusiastic about being a part of the cultural scene in Phoenix. And I love the fact that people can just walk in off the street because it’s an area where people are out First Friday and Roosevelt Row and there’s just so much going on. And they can just happen upon us at the cathedral, and it just makes us feel like we’re really in the heart of the community.

Greg: Karen, Vivi, thanks so much for your time.

Viviana: Thanks for having us.

Karen: Thank you.

Greg Kostraba: Violinist Karen Sinclair and flutist Viviana Cumplido Wilson are members of the chamber ensemble Urban Nocturnes, which will be featured Friday, April 24th at 7:00 PM at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Phoenix. It’s the first day of a two-day Composer Fest featuring the music of Joseph Haydn. Tickets and more information about the Composer Fest are at trinitymusicaz.org. For the KBACH Heart of the Arts podcast, I’m Greg Kostraba.