Miriam Helms Ålien, Ildikó Szabó, István Lajkó & Eleanor Lyons Presented by Liszt Academy

Love and death – these two subjects have inspired countless artistic creations, and they count amongst those issues that engage humanity most frequently. However, while the motifs referring to these are easy to recognize in a poem or a painting, they are far more difficult to decode when manifest in a hidden form such as a piano trio. With an awareness of the circumstance of composition, however, it becomes clear that the two piano trios by Dmitry Shostakovich, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, erect a memorial in music to love and mortality: the opus 8 work was influenced by his first love and written immediately after his father’s death, while the opus 67 is a tribute to his deceased friend. The concert includes the vocal work Seven Romances, which speaks of these two universal experiences in an explicit way. The trio made up of pianist István Lajkó, cellist Ildikó Szabó and Norwegian violinist Miriam Helms Ålien are joined by the Australian soprano Eleanor Lyons.