Dvořák, Fibich & Martinů: Piano Trios

In their third title, the Smetana Trio presents us with piano trios from the recent chapters of Czech music history. The oldest piece on the album, Zdeněk Fibich's Piano Trio in F minor, was written in 1872 when the composer was just twenty-one years old. This remarkable piece bears witness to Fibich's extraordinary talent and is perhaps the second important piano trio inthe Czech literature after Smetana's Trio in G minor (recorded on SU 3810-2). Following up on their second album, which contains Dvořák's Trios Nos 3 and 4, the ensemble has recordedhis Piano Trio No. 1. This piece, completed only three years after Fibich's, employs a wide range of expressions from fascinating canonic sections to lyrically calm passages to the stirringoptimism of the Finale. The CD closes with the 1950 Piano Trio in D minor, one of the best works of Bohuslav Martinů's later life. It brings his neoclassical period to a close and bears distinctive signs of the synthetic style that characterized the last period of his compositions. This CD promises to be a worthy successor to their previous album (SU 3872-2) which received a number of awards, including the 2007 BBC Music Magazine Award and the Diapason d'Or.