Smetana / Eben / Martinu: Czech Piano Trios

Smetana / Eben / Martinu: Czech Piano Trios cover $30.00 Low Stock add to cart

BEDRICH SMETANA / PETR EBEN / BOHUSLAV MARTINU
Smetana / Eben / Martinu: Czech Piano Trios
The Florestan Trio

[ Hyperion / CD ]

Release Date: Thursday 20 May 2010

Should this item be out of stock at the time of your order, we would expect to be able to supply it to you within 2 - 5 business days.

The three works on this CD cover the complete span of what is usually thought of as the Czech school of composition. Smetana, regarded as the founding father, first showed the way to bring traditional dance and song into the mainstream of European composition, forging a national style. Eben, who died in 2007, was one of the most distinguished composers who carried this line to the present day. But, as these three contrasted pieces demonstrate, Czech composers were subject to very different kinds of influence at different times. Smetana's Piano Trio, an early work, shows more influence from the mainstream giants of the time-particularly Schumann and Liszt-than it does from any 'folk' elements. By the time Martinu wrote his first Piano Trio, he was immersed in the exciting cosmopolitan culture of twentieth-century Paris. And Petr Eben took the neoclassicism of Martinu and his contemporaries and developed his own individual approach to it.

"[The Eben] is the sort of score that the Florestans seem to relish, music full of subtle shades, many of them tucked carefully within subsidiary voices...[The Smetana] is an immensely imposing piece, written in the wake of great personal loss, and the Florestans do it justice...this is an excellent programme." Gramophone Magazine: Editor's Choice - July 2010

"The Florestan are particularly successful in the two 20th-century trios. The brief Adagio of the Martinu is remarkably moving. If anything, the Eben is more impressive with the players completely in command of his distinctive and often introspective idiom." BBC Music

Tracks:

Piano Trio in G minor, Op 15
Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)

Piano Trio No 1 'Cinq pièces brèves'
Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959)

Piano Trio
Petr Eben (1929-2007)