Usually one would hesitate to program two pieces written within ten years of each other in the very heart of the Romantic era—but although close in time, Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio #2 in C minor and Bedřich Smetana’s Piano Trio in G minor are worlds apart.  Mendelssohn was an original insider—a child prodigy, a master by his teens, flourishing at the very center of the well-established German tradition.  Composed in 1845, his Piano Trio in C minor alternates between controlled fury and charm, grace and wit.  Smetana was an outsider—he dreamed of being “a Mozart in composition and a Liszt in technique” but struggled with his schooling, and he aspired to create a Czech musical tradition to rival that of Germany.  Composed ten years after Mendelssohn’s C minor trio, and one year after the death of a favorite daughter, Smetana’s Piano Trio in G minor is raw and powerful, a lunatic combination of soaring melodies, nationalism and private grief.

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Works to be performed on the “10 years and 10,000 miles apart” program include:

Bedřich Smetana, Piano Trio in G Minor
Felix Mendelssohn, Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 66