Janáček Trio prepared a concert program that sets the oeuvre of Bohuslav Martinů to the context of French composers of older and younger generation. The compositions of younger Jean Françaix are characterized by a light, tonal, graceful, and ironic touch, and by a superb sense of the nature of a given instrument or genre. Piano Trio in D major was written in 1986 and is imbued with the composer’s typical inventiveness and wit.

With Piano Trio No. 3 in C major, Bohuslav Martinů revisited the Classical tradition. At the time, the composer was slowly extricating himself from a difficult personal situation, in part due to an unfortunate head injury caused from an accidental fall during a teaching stay in Great Barrington. The following five years, his compositional output was significantly diminished and focused mostly on shorter works or chamber music. This also gave rise to the last two piano trios.

Maurice Ravel composed his only Trio for Piano, Violin and Violoncello in summer 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I. The work’s inspirations reach far, from Basque dances to Malaysian poetry. The first movement is introduced by a fragile and poetic piano theme, which supplanted by the second theme in the Pavane. Ravel characterised the movement as featuring Basque timbres. The second movement’s exotic title, Pantoum, denotes its notional connection with the eponymous Malaysian oral tradition of poetic declamation.  Three themes – the first staccato, the second a romantic legato, and the third expressively lyrical – are interwoven in a virtuosic scherzo. The slow movement in the form of a passacaglia and the finale with its 5/4 and 7/4 time are again reminiscent of the folk music of Ravel’s Basque region.