Trio Accanto

out into the open collects four works written for Trio Accanto by Brice Pauset, Rebecca Saunders, Misato Mochizuki and Beat Furrer. It is also the last studio recording of the line-up of Marcus Weiss on saxophones, Nicolas Hodges on piano and Christian Dierstein on percussion. The three worked together for twelve years, and they recorded this programme before Hodges left the trio in 2024.

Trio Accanto was founded in 1994 by Weiss, Dierstein and the pianist Yukiko Sugawara. Hodges replaced Sugawara in 2012 and played his first Accanto concert in Prague on 1 November 2013. The composers span a generation: the Swiss-Austrian Beat Furrer (born 1954), the French Brice Pauset (1965), the British Rebecca Saunders (1967) and the Japanese Misato Mochizuki (1969). The album was produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln in 2024, recorded and mastered by Anton Langer and Dirk Franken.

Pauset's Adagio dialettico, for soprano saxophone, percussion and piano, was already in the trio's core repertoire when Hodges arrived, and he played it at his debut concert. Furrer's In's Offene, which gives the album its title, uses soprano and baritone saxophone with piano and percussion; the trio premiered it at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik on 8 May 2022. Mochizuki's Satellites returns to soprano saxophone. Saunders's That Time, a trio for baritone saxophone, percussion and piano lasting about 22 minutes, was co-commissioned by Radio France, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Lucerne Festival and Milano Musica.

Each composer writes for three distinct musical personalities, by turns contemplative, virtuosic, sensuous and experimental. Several of the pieces, Schott notes, use the trio to ask how individuality and community, freedom and a shared purpose can live together. Pauset studied with Gérard Grisey at the Paris Conservatoire, and Mochizuki, after studies in Tokyo and Paris, took IRCAM's Cursus with Tristan Murail. The disc belongs to Wergo's series of Trio Accanto recordings; since 2025 the trio's pianist has been Stefan Wirth.

CD, Wergo WER 7419 2, released in 2026 under exclusive licence from WDR mediagroup, total time 70:09.