Repertoire
Robert Schumann: Piano trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63 (1847) 31′
Wolfgang Rihm: Fremde Szenen III (1983-84) 15′
Johannes Brahms: Piano trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8 (1889) 37′
Artists
Trio Bendetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk
Nicola Benedetti, violin
Leonard Elschenbroich, cello
Alexei Grynyuk, piano
Program
The lives of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms intersected on multiple occasions, and always intensely. Schumann, publisher, and music critic as well as composer, promoted the young composer Brahms via the press, and his wife Clara mentored Brahms who was always self-critical with the works he composed and often discarded or rewrote them until he felt satisfied with the result. The Trio no. 1 is a good example of Brahms’ perfectionist obsession, although he composed a remarkably different version of it in 1889. Schumann’s first Piano Trio brings the energy, vivacity, and character diversity of militant German romanticism within a classical form that is constantly challenged. Schumann’s spirit is very present in Wolfgang Rihm’s Fremde Szenen, a series of piano trios that recall tradition but join it with the fluidity of modernity.
