Dvorák: Piano Trios Op. 21 & 26

After their three recordings dedicated to Dvorák’s Piano Trios No. 3 and No. 4 (the ‘Dumky’), as well as his First and Second Piano Quartets, the Piano Quintets and the Bagatelles, Omri Epstein, Mathieu van Bellen and Ori Epstein conclude their complete cycle of the Czech composer’s chamber music with piano with his first two piano trios: the bond of sympathy between the artists becomes evident as they communicate both their passion for this repertoire and their pleasure in making music together.

The Trio in B flat major – the first that has survived – was composed in the spring of 1875, during a period when Dvorák was conceiving and consolidating a more conventional sense of musical form and style. The works of this remarkably prolific year show a distinct crystallisation of Dvorák’s mature melodic style. When the composer began work on his Trio in G minor, in January 1876, he was exhausted after the completion of his opera Vanda, and overcome with grief for the death of his daughter Josefa. He would certainly have known how, back in 1855, his elder colleague Smetana had turned to the genre of the piano trio in similar circumstances, to express his sorrow at the death of his own daughter. This recording completes this four-part edition of Dvorák’s piano trios, quartets and quintets.