Dorothy Curtis (violin), Florence E. Brown (cello) and Mirrie Solomon (piano) gave their first performance as The Salon Trio on 23 October, 1911 in Sydney, Australia. Although together less than five years and having several personnel changes, the Salon Trio nevertheless helped to establish a chamber music tradition in Sydney in addition to normalising the notion of an all-female performing group. Neither of these could be taken for granted in early-20th-century Australia. Thanks to the exhaustive research undertaken by Jeanell Carrigan, author of the liner notes and pianist for this recording, Music for the Salon Trio brings together four early-20th-century Australian works written specifically for this ensemble. 

Salon Trio

Mirrie Solomon (1889-1986) was the Salon Trio’s first pianist; her Piano Trio (1916) in four movements is emotionally intense in a Romantic style. So too is a three-movement Piano Trio in A Minor (1915) by Solomon’s husband Alfred Hill (1869-1960), with a central Andante movement influenced by the Maori traditions of his native New Zealand. Iris de Cairos-Rego (1894-1987) took over as the Salon Trio’s pianist in 1912, and her dark, brooding,...