Programme
For an exceptional pianist like Martin Helmchen, it must be a luxury to be able to make music with his wife and top cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker on demand. When a good friend like violinist Antje Weithaas joins them, the piano trio of the three soloists is perfect and can devote itself to highlights of the trio literature.
For example, the B flat major trio by Franz Schubert. Robert Schumann called the passages in Franz Schubert's work ‘heavenly lengths’, in which music develops from simple motifs and thoughts that seems to have no end and constantly brings forth new twists, colours and moods. In the second and fourth movements of the B flat major piano trio in particular, you can experience how a simple song or dance motif is varied and taken to ‘heavenly heights’ through distant keys.
Peter Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio is also a monumental work of chamber music. It consists of only two movements, but they take on symphonic dimensions in their expansiveness. It is hard to believe that the composer almost despaired of the challenge of writing a trio. ‘I assure you that it is agonising for me to hear a trio or a sonata with violin and cello.’ With the composition of the great A minor Piano Trio, Tchaikovsky proved himself wrong.
(Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft e.V.)