Two Dramatic Piano Trios

Smetana:        Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15

Shostakovich:  Piano Trio No.2 in E minor Op. 67

Piano Trio in G minor, Bedřich Smetana’s first unquestionable masterpiece, was composed during an extremely difficult period in the composer’s life. It is truly a grandiose and tragic work that is not nationalistic, but profoundly personal in inspiration.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s magnificent Piano Trio No.2 in E minor was written in memory of Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, who died of a heart attack on February 11, 1944, at the age of forty-one while in evacuation in Siberia with the Leningrad Philharmonic where he was serving as artistic director. “I cannot express in words all of the grief I felt when I received the news of the death of Ivan Ivanovich … who was my closest friend,” Shostakovich wrote to Sollertinsky’s widow. “I owe all my education to him.”

Violin:             Aleksandr Zhuk

Cello:              Ashley Garritson

Piano:              Catherine Lan