Petr Iljič Čajkovskij Piano B Moll

Antonin Dvořaìk (1841-1904) was a great synthesist, ingeniously combining arguably incongruent strains: folk music (Czech as well as American) with refined classical forms, romantic extroversion with instrumental austerity and national Czech character with worldwide appeal. The three compositions on this album were all created at turning points in Dvořák’s life, when radical changes in his situation impacted his creative career.

Jean-Michel Bernard is a French pianist, composer, educator, orchestrator, and music producer. He is well known for regularly writing, performing, and scoring for films, such as The Science of Sleep, Hugo, Paris-Manhattan, Ca$h, and Be Kind Rewind.

With orchestral concerts on hold for the foreseeable future, the Linos Piano Trio’s Stolen Music project takes inspiration from earlier times and brings distilled versions of great orchestral works to smaller spaces.

After its first album devoted to Schumann’s first two piano trios, the Kungsbacka Piano Trio now presents the conclusion of this series with the Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor, to which they add the Six Studies in Canonic Form, originally for pedal piano and performed here in an arrangement for piano trio, and an early work, the Quartet in C minor for violin, viola, cello and piano, which was only published in 1979.

Trio Rodin's debut recording presents a new version of the Granados piano trio Op. 50 based on the manuscript found at the "Museu de la Música de Barcelona" instead of the more commonly played Edition UMe. The CD also includes the world first recording of Granados Trova along with an arrangement by the composer himself of his most famous chamber orchestra piece Elisenda.

While we associate Tchaikovsky with music of virtuoso power and difficulty, sweeping up audiences with the fire of the Violin Concerto and First Piano Concerto, he also applied himself to music for the ever-growing market of amateur music-makers during his lifetime. Like many other great composers, he knew how to write for musicians of moderate ability without compromising or simplifying the individuality of his voice as a composer.

Charles Ives’ (1874–1954) only Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano is without question, one of his most major works. Amy Beach (1867–1944) was recognized in her lifetime as one of the most acclaimed American composers – her Trio, Op. 150, was composed in 1938 and is steeped in the developmental processes of late-nineteenth-century models while quoting two Inuit folk songs. Although born and educated in England, Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) wrote her Piano Trio as part of a chamber music competition in Pittsfield MA and has been described as the finest work in the genre by any British composer.

Selim Palmgren’s piano miniatures were extremely popular during his lifetime and were played by the great virtuosos of the day. The sixth volume in this acclaimed series presents a panorama of Palmgren’s works and includes two of his greatest and most important solo pieces – the suite Ungdom, Op. 28 laced with Impressionist and Finnish folk elements, and the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 54 which includes Raindrops and Moonlight, two of his best-known and most atmospheric works. Also included are Lisztian virtuoso studies, Hungarian evocations, and a beautiful, moving Prélude funèbre that was played at Palmgren’s own funeral. Jouni Somero, Palmgren’s greatest modern exponent, continues his historic survey of piano music by one of Finland’s most respected and admired composers.

This collection vividly shows the poetic and wide-ranging expressive qualities of Hugh Shrapnel’s piano music over the last 20 years. Ranging from the formal, classical restraint of the Sonatina to the impassioned elaborate textures of For an Alternative, the light hearted witty Esquisse mécanique to the sombre and brooding Premonition.

The Geneva Piano Trio was founded by three international awarded musicians, established in Switzerland. Sharing Russian origin and having lived in Geneva for twenty years, they paid tribute to their welcoming city by naming their musical ensemble The Geneva Piano Trio. The recording was done in the famous music room of a Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds (a UNESCO World Heritage site), holding a revolutionary Dolby Atmos technology. For this first CD, the musicians choose to celebrate their cultural roots with trios of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.