Mozart:
Divertimento in E flat major, K563 (1788)

Schubert:
String Trio in B flat major, D471 (1816)

Each instrument is primus inter pares, every note is significant …’ is how the scholar Alfred Einstein described W.A. Mozart’s Divertimento in E flat major for string trio. What other work could then be more suitable for the first disc of a star-studded ensemble such as Trio Zimmermann, in which each member is very definitely first among equals? Composed in the same year as the three final symphonies, Mozart’s only real trio for violin, viola and cello is a weighty work – six movements and close to 50 glorious minutes of music – and the fact that Mozart chose the title Divertimento (from the Italian divertire: to amuse) for a piece of these dimensions has often been remarked upon. But to Mozart, there was no real dividing line between ‘serious’ art and pleasure or amusement – and so, to quote Einstein once more, he gave us ‘the most perfect, finest thing that has ever been heard in this world’. To round off the disc, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit and Christian Poltéra have chosen to record Franz Schubert’s first contribution to the string trio genre, the opening – and only complete – movement (Allegro) of his String Trio in B flat major, D 471, written in 1816 when the composer was only nineteen.