From Birmingham
The Liverpool Chamber Music Players:
Louis Cohen (Violin), S. Ledgard (Violoncello), Edith Byrom (Pianoforte)
Throughout almost all Dvorak's work we feel the presence of the national element of the Bohemian folk-songs and folk-dances that ho heard in the village alehouse or on the village green.
A Dumka is a piece of a passionate elegiac character, and the word Dumky is the plural form. Dvorak's Dumky Trio, for Piano, Violin and 'Cello, consists of a succession of five brief Movements which have in common a passionate emotion.
In the First Movement a slow Introduction leads to a quick portion. The Second Movement is slow, the Third moves at a moderate pace, the Fourth is quick, and the Last, after a slow and dignified Introduction goes off at a gay pace.
Constance Taylor (Contralto)
Chamber Music Players
Theme and Variation from Trio in A Minor
Tchaikovsky
ONE spring day in 1873 the Professors of the Moscow Conservatoire, Tchaikovsky and Nicholas Rubinstein among them, shut up their books and pianos and had a trip into the country, hearing, during the day, some folk songs, sung by village lads and lasses.
When Rubinstein died, Tchaikovsky commemorated his friend in a Trio, inscribed 'To the memory of a great artist,' and with the recollection of their happy picnic in mind, used one of the folk-songs they had heard that day as the theme of the extensive Second (and last) Movement of the Trio.
In this Trio till the resources of the instruments are used, with remarkable effect. One almost feels, at times, that a whole Orchestra is at work.
The Trio is in two Movements only. In the Second Movement, the Air with Variations, the Theme is presented in many styles, appearing now as the basis of a Waltz (Variation VI), now as the 'Subject' of a Fugue (Variation X), and sometimes in more sombrely expressive forms. Variation XII, the last (Quick, resolute and fiery), is extended almost to the proportions of a separate Movement, and at the final page we have the sad rhythm of a Funeral March.
