The history of the chamber music trio is full of variety, and the term has been used in a number of different ways over the past 300 years. Today the forms we know best are the piano trio and the string trio, an offshoot of the 18th-century sonate a tre from which Haydn developed a standard genre.

This SPANNUNGEN CD of live festival recordings brings together three piano trios. Starting in the mid-19th century, we can follow the transformation of the genre over a century and a half, visiting three stages of stylistic development in compositions by Smetana, Ravel and the young Welshman Huw Watkins.

For different reasons all three pieces do have their spezial background: Smetana had to go through a horrible time of a personal great misfortune; Ravel was fighting inner turmoils on the subject of combining (or not!) the string instrument with the piano as well as about the political confusion 1914 (!); and the young Welshman Huw Watkins has chosen a special (and not unusual) casting of his brand new commissioned trio which is playing with full amount of colours by using clarinet, viola and piano. Huw Watkins proofed not only in this recording to be a phantastic pianist (see also the Smetana recording): And also the young German clarinet player Sebastian Manz introduced himself with a very special virtuosity and breathtaking control of his instrument.