Trio in La minor pentru pian, vioara si violoncel

In the Spring of 1916 George Enescu shut himself away in a Bucharest sanatorium in order to commit to paper the piano trio in A minor that he had been carrying in his head for some time, and emerged a few days later with thirteen pages of hastily written manuscript. Sadly, it was never performed in his lifetime, and it was only in 1965, ten years after his death, that the pianist and composer Hilda Jerea (1916-80) discovered the work, prepared a performing edition and took part in the premiere.

Thirty years later the Romanian composer and distinguished Enescu authority, Pascal Bentoiu (1927-2016), completed a more thorough edition of the work, and it is this edition that trios have used since, and that we, the Schubert Ensemble, used for performances and in preparing for our recording of the piece.

This trio was the fourth major work of Enescu that we had recorded, after the two piano quartets and the piano quintet, and it was while preparing for our recording of the trio that we started to wonder about certain notes, harmonies and dynamics. Knowing that the work had been left partly unfinished, we became increasingly curious to know what was in the manuscript. It took several months to track this down, but thanks to Raluca Cimpoiasu at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London and Cristina Andrei at the Enescu Museum in Bucharest, we were eventually provided with access (over the internet) to a scanned copy of Enescu's handwritten manuscript. - William Howard (piano), Simon Blendis (violin), Jane Samon (cello) - Members of The Schubert Ensemble