Trio Concert by Anna Lilla Székely, Áron Rátkay & Attila Szaniszló Presented by Liszt Academy

The trio, formed by students of the Liszt Academy, has chosen a fully romantic repertoire for their program. In the first half of the concert, the audience will hear two compositions written by their composers at the age of thirty. Schubert composed the Notturno a year before his death, which was likely originally the slow movement of his piano trio in B-flat major, but at the publisher’s request, the composer replaced it with the slow movement we know today. This “orphaned” piece, surprisingly familiar among its similarly orchestrated siblings, opens the evening. This composition is followed by Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, one of his most famous chamber works, which Schumann placed alongside Beethoven’s and Schubert’s trios – in connection with this, he famously wrote that Mendelssohn was the Mozart of the nineteenth century. The grandeur of the work is complemented by the piano part’s difficulty and its greater significance than usual. In the second half of the concert, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor will be performed. The Russian composer began composing this piece after he turned forty, as he had long held the belief that the timbres of the piano, cello, and violin could not blend together. However, he eventually completed his only trio, and its subtitle, À la mémoire d’un grand artiste (In Memory of a Great Artist), refers to his close friend and mentor, Nikolai Rubinstein, who died in 1881. Later, the composer referred to the work – which consists of a fast movement, a theme and variations, and a coda – with satisfaction. However, he did not deny the symphonic sounds packed into the chamber music formation.