Piano Trios 8 & 67 / Piano Trio 15

Dmitri Shostakovich was only 17 years old when he completed his piano studies in Petrograd. In the same year he published his first piano trio, nonetheless already as Opus 8. The Trio Alba juxtaposes this youthful work with the Trio Op. 67 from 1944, and with Bedřich Smetana's Piano Trio Op. 15 expands the worthwhile view of the chamber music of the Slavic cultural region. Smetana's music is Slavic: the Furiant, a lively Bohemian dance, characterizes two of the three movements. The work has a sad background - Smetana's daughter died shortly before, only four years old. The trio is dedicated to her memory, lamenting phrases and groans express the pain. Wide soloistic passages convey the impression of great loneliness. And sonorous beauty. Shostakovich's Trio op. 67 also commemorates a deceased person; the composer's deep consternation over the sudden death of a friend is expressed not only in a sensitive letter to the widow. Like a heart-rending lament, the strings play fortissimo con sordino shortly before the end - a fascinating sound effect that goes through marrow and bone. The Trio Alba is unreservedly engaged in the depths of these states of the soul. And also the rapturousness of a young love, which permeates Shostakovich's first trio, finds adequate expression with the three Austrians.