Schubert – Piano Trio in One Movement in B flat Major, D. 28

This trio shows a clear bridge between two of the Vienna Four, as The New York Times recently dubbed Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.  Schubert wrote his Piano Trio in One Movement in 1812, when he was only 15 years old.  He was studying then with Antonio Salieri at the Imperial Academy in Vienna.  Salieri introduced young Schubert to the works of Mozart, whose influence can be heard in this work.

Prokofiev – Sonata for Two Violins, Op, 56

Sergei Prokofiev wrote the Sonata for Two Violins in 1932. Born in Czarist Russia, Prokofiev achieved fame as a composer just as the revolution was tearing his country apart. He fled for Paris and later the United States.  Once in America, he gave up his early confrontational compositional style and embraced a warmer and more lyrical approach exemplified by this sonata.

Dvorak – Five Bagatelles for Two Violins, Cello and Harmonium , Op. 47

Czech composer Antonin Dvorak wrote these five bagatelles in 1878.  A clear case of chamber music written for entertainment and amateur performance, these pieces were written by Dvorak while he was playing chamber music for pleasure with his friends. One of his close friends owned a harmonium, so Dvorak composed these short quartets with harmonium in place of the viola. A harmonium is a reed-type organ that was very popular in the mid to late 19th century. Dvorak was a violinist, but he switched to the harmonium to perform this composition with his friends.  Many of the melodies were derived from Czech folk music.

Faure – Piano Quartet in c minor, Op. 15

Gabriel Faure composed this Piano Quartet in 1883.  Chronologically, in terms of French music, this puts the quartet after the Romantic era of Cesar Franck, and prior to works by the Impressionists Ravel and Debussy . Like all of Faure’s music, this quartet is unmistakably French with a distinctly modern sensibility in terms of harmony.