Storioni Trio Amsterdam - Rainer Kussmaul - Vladimir Mendelssohn

The Gypsy Trio is one of the late piano trios by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). The trio not only plays a fundamental role in Haydn's piano music - it could be said to play the same role as the piano concerto in Mozart's work - but Haydn's piano trios also occasionally contain his most advanced musical ideas and daring experiments in form. Though they were primarily written for amateurs (read: young upper-middle-class women), nonetheless 'Papa Haydn' provided the genre with the necessary forward-looking stimuli: he was successful in substituting the absolute power of the piano with a more 'democratic' conversation between three equal partners. This trio is an excellent opportunity for the young Dutch Storioni Trio Amsterdam to introduce an extended number of players, including strings and piano. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) wrote his Piano Quartet during the winter of 1842 with the same élan as his famous Piano Quintet, despite horrible, sleepless nights. It is a somewhat mysterious yet splendid work, which betokens the later work of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) for the same instruments. From Brahms himself, we will be hearing the Piano Quintet. The composer destroyed the original version, written in 1862, and finally arranged the piece in a way that pleased him in 1864. It became a masterful composition, with a remarkable balance between strings and piano.