Savannah Music Festival LIVE 316 – Schubert’s E-flat Piano Trio

Original air date: week of August 2, 2010

While it’s hard to give a satisfactory definition of “genius,” it nearly always happens that artistic genius expresses itself in youth. With the greatest of geniuses there follows an extended period of prodigious activity at the highest level, which seldom sustains its fire throughout a long life. Some, like Franz Schubert, are taken at the height of their youthful genius, in the midst of frenetic activity, and their early death always begs the question, “what might have been.” In this episode, we listen to a 2010 performance of one of Schubert’s great masterpieces, the Piano Trio in E-flat Major, played by David Finckel, Wu Han and Philip Setzer. That work is preceded by a 2008 SMF performance of Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat, D. 471, performed by Benny Kim, Carla Maria Rodrigues and Keith Robinson.