This CD features the piano trio, which was adopted and given its own voice by two of the most important Slavic composers of the 19th century: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Bedřich Smetana.

These two trio recordings originally appeared on the American Vox label and were recorded in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. The Tchaikovsky Trio was one of the first recordings to be released on the newly developed medium of the LP record developed by Columbia in 1948. Both trio recordings feature the legendary violinist Louis Kaufman, who was the leading Hollywood studio violin soloist throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. He was featured in the luscious violin solos in such classic film scores as Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Wuthering Heights and Modern Times. After the Second World War, following his career in the film industry, Kaufman resumed his concert activities as a violin soloist. His world-premiere recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – a work which was virtually unknown until after the Second World War – won him the illustrious Grand Prix du Disque and he made the premiere recordings of many 20th-century works, including the Barber Concerto.

The other artists appearing in these trio recordings are the cellists Kurt Reher and Willem van den Burg, principals of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony respectively. The brilliant Czech pianist Rudolf Firkušný is featured on the Smetana Trio, in one of the first recordings he ever made.