Miriam Helms Ålien, Ildikó Szabó & István Lajkó Presented by Liszt Academy

It is no exaggeration to say that during this chamber recital young musicians act as guides to three completely different worlds since the three works on the programme all evince very divergent styles, and the dates of the piano trios all fall in different centuries. Yet the pieces are still connected by the fact that each of the musical means displays a national character. Haydn's sparkling closing movement of his classical trio composed in London develops Hungarian, military recruitment dance (verbunkos) themes, while Piazzolla’s passionate and immersive piece commemorates Argentina’s cultural symbol, the tango. In the closing number of the concert Dvořák evokes a lament of Ukrainian origin (dumka), which as a melancholic instrumental piece came to be a musical embodiment of pan-Slavism in the second half of the 19th century. Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Moniuszko and Janáček all composed dumkas, but the best-known and most popular piece in the genre is probably Dvořák's Dumky trio interpreted in a special form at this evening concert.