Czech Chamber Music Society • Trio Martinů

Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15 (30')

Bedřich Smetana

We now rate Smetana’s only piano trio as one of the finest chamber works written by Europe’s most important composers at the time. It is a pity that this modern composition remained hidden in manuscript form for so long. Smetana’s immediate stimulus for composing his Piano Trio in G minor was the death of his beloved first-born daughter, whom he called Friederika, Bedřiška, or Fricínka in his German or Czech writings. He mentioned her repeatedly in connection with the trio: “a remembrance of my first child Bedřiška, who carried us away with her extraordinary musical talent, but was soon torn from us by inexorable death at four and a half years of age.” She died of scarlet fever on 6 September 1855. Smetana finished the composition on 22 November 1855, and it was already heard in public for the first time on 3 December of that year in Prague’s Konvikt Hall. Joining Smetana at the piano were the violinist Otto Friedrich Königslöw and the cellist Johann August Julius Goltermann. Into his trio, Smetana poured all of the artistry he had so far attained. This was also appreciated by Franz Liszt during his visit to Prague in September 1856, when the same performers played the trio at Smetana’s home, about which the composer later recalled in a letter: “A year later we played it at my home for Liszt, who embraced me and congratulated my wife because of the work.” A year and a half after the premiere, in May 1857, Smetana went back and revised some passages in the trio. By then, he was working in Gothenburg, Sweden, and at the time he wrote in his diary: “Today I reworked the whole first movement of the trio, and I am satisfied with it as it now stands.” The revised version, which is basically the form in which the work is now known, was performed on 11 February 1858 in Gothenburg, again with the composer at the piano, and with the violin and cello parts played by Josef Čapek and August Meissner. Despite Smetana’s efforts, for a long time he could not find anyone to publish the work. He did not succeed until a quarter century later. Thanks to the selfless efforts of Jan Ludevít Procházka to promote Smetana’s music, the Hamburg publisher Hugo Pohle printed the trio in 1880 with the opus number 15.