Smetana:
Piano Trio in G minor Op 15 1855

Martinu:
Piano Trio No 1 ‘Cinq pieces breves’ 1930

Eben:
Piano Trio 1986

The Florestan Trio is one of Britian’s best-loved chamber groups, and its many Hyperion recordings are routinely

acclaimed as benchmark versions of the repertoire. After delighting listeners and critics with two discs of Dvorák, the

ensemble now further explores the Czech piano trio repertoire.

The three works on this CD cover the complete span of what is usually thought of as the Czech school of composition.

Smetana, regarded as the founding father, first showed the way to bring traditional dance and song into the mainstream

of European composition, forging a national style. Eben, who died in 2007, was one of the most distinguished

composers who carried this line to the present day. But, as these three contrasting pieces demonstrate, Czech composers

were subject to very different kinds of influence at different times. Smetana’s Piano Trio, an early work, shows more

influence from the mainstream giants of the time particularly Schumann and Liszt than it does from any ‘folk’

elements. By the time Martinuo wrote his first Piano Trio, he was immersed in the exciting cosmopolitan culture of

twentieth-century Paris. And Petr Eben took the neoclassicism of Martinuo and his contemporaries, and developed his

own individual approach to it.