Trio Bohemo- Smetana & Schubert: Piano Trios

"I am the instrument of a higher power. With God's help and grace, I shall one day be a Liszt in technique and a Mozart as a composer. " The ambitious plan in the 18-year-old composer's diary was eventually fulfilled. He was a very sought-after pianist. As a composer, he left his mark most clearly in the cycle of symphonic poems titled Ma vlast (My Country) and through chamber music in his Piano Trio and the String Quartet "From My Life"; those three works reflect tragic episodes in Smetana's life. The Trio in G minor, one of the gems of 19th-century chamber music, was written in under three months of 1855 as an outgrowth of the composer's immense sorrow over the death of his daughter. Smetana's emotionally gripping trio is heard on the album together with one of the most important chamber works of the romantic era, Schubert's monumental Piano Trio in E flat major (1827). This masterpiece was likewise written by a 30-year-old composer, but it is also one of Schubert's last completed wo