Zehetmair Trio

For the concert by the Zehetmair Quartet, the ensemble will be reduced to three players due to the illness of the second violinist Matthias Metzger. This trio will perform work by Mozart, Schubert and Klein. The string trio first appeared as a musical genre in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the use of chamber music shifted from the court and church to the aristocratic drawing room and concerts for the middle classes. This led to the professionalisation of chamber music: from ad hoc groups to permanent collaboration. Chamber music became the collective name for all music performed by small ensembles of two to nine players. The string trio and the divertimento were two new musical genres that arose in this new concept of chamber music. Mozart composed his Divertimento in E flat major, KV563, in Vienna in 1788. It is a piece for string trio (violin, viola and cello) and comprises six movements. The title of the work is somewhat misleading, because it is of the same quality as Mozart's great string quartets. It is serious, sober and complex, and full of marvellous themes. The modulating developments are among Mozart's most modern. Franz Schubert wrote his String Trio in B flat, D471, in 1816. Unfortunately this composition remained unfinished. All we have is a spontaneous, lyrical and gracious allegro in sonata form which comes very close to the style of Mozart. This string trio, together with his second string trio which he wrote in 1817, was probably intended to be performed during one of the notorious Schubert evenings at the home of one of his friends, Otto Hatwig or Ignaz von Sonnleithner in Vienna. In 1942, the Czech composer Gideon Klein (1919-1945) was deported to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. However, his imprisonment did not prevent him from clandestinely continuing his musical activities. In the course of time this activity became more or less tolerated and he was even allowed to organise chamber music concerts. Throughout this period the Klein wrote a great many compositions which, as if by chance, have been handed down to us. This String Trio was his very last composition. Nine days after he completed it, Klein was transferred to Auschwitz. On the 27th January 1945 he was killed by the Nazis at Fürstengrube. The compositional style of Klein's string trio is reminiscent of, among other things, the work of Janacek, Kodaly and Schoenberg.