Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949) and Bedřich Smetana (1824-84) hold special places in music history as ardent nationalist composers and creators of significant stage works. Pfitzner’s operas and incidental music culminated in his Palestrina (1917) and Smetana established a canon of eight nationalist operas, incorporating traditional Czech dance and song into much of his mature oeuvre . Both composers also spread their net widely into other musical genres, contributing significantly, if not extensively, to the chamber music repertory. Although written over forty years apart, these two piano trios share notable common ground. Both were written during troubled times for their creators and count among their composer’s first mature artistic achievements; moreover, both resort to motivic recall or transformation between movements with the intention of realising structural unity and both received hostile critical receptions.

The Wiener Schubert Trio (Vienna Schubert Trio) was founded in 1985 and performed as a full-time ensemble until deciding to disband in 1993. From the outset the trio appeared regularly in the music centres of Europe, North America and Asia, and rapidly established a reputation as one of the foremost pia no trios. After its first tour of the United States in 1986, the Trio was named the year’s “Best New Visiting Chamber Ensemble” by the Washington Post. The ensemble devoted itself to both the established masterpieces of the repertoire and many less familiar works, often presented in the context of concert series designed to demonstrate relationships between various composers and styles.

“The Vienna Schubert Trio’s fastidious attention to detail, malleable phrasing and velvety sound world are tailor-made for the Debussy and Chausson (both have never sounded finer on disc). Yet the revelation here is a performance of the Rachmaninoff that exchanges the delirious intensity of the Kogan–Luzanov–Svetlanov classic (Melodiya) for a cultivated poise and affection that is no less deeply moving.” – Julian Haylock, The Strad