Repertoire
Franz Schubert: Notturno in E flat major for piano trio, Op. 148, D. 897 (1827) 10’
Arno Babajanian: Piano trio in F sharp minor (1952) 22’
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67 (1944) 28’
Artists
Esther Yoo, violin
Narek Hakhnazaryan, cello
Zhang Zuo, piano
Program
The nocturne became highly popular in piano literature as a freely-structured short piece, evocative of nightlife, and championed by the Romantics as a companion and inspiration for creation. Schubert transfers this Notturno —thus named by the publisher— from a piano solo to a piano trio, a work of a mysterious, almost ecstatic nature, which we will be able to hear performed by the exceptional Z.E.N. Trio.The work of Arno Babajanian is little known in Western Europe, despite him being a renowned composer in Armenia and in the former Soviet Union in general. Composer of soundtracks, chamber works, art songs and stage music, he wrote Piano Trio in a late Romantic style, with multiple references to the traditional music of Armenia, his country of origin. Eight years earlier, in the midst of world war, Dmitri Shostakovich dedicated the Piano Trio No. 2 to his friend Ivan Sollertinsky, who had died shortly before that. A lugubrious and elegiac work that reflects the composer’s eternal ambiguity and tormented spirit.
