Trio Wanderer Harmonia Mundi HMC 902060 ****

Smetana’s sole piano trio is a strange piece, written out of the grief of the loss of his daughter, Bedriska, who died of scarlet fever in 1855, aged four and a half. It was, if the first movement is anything to go by, an extremely heated, unbalanced, even angry grief. The second and third movements seem, by contrast, a celebration of the life that was lived. It’s a peculiarly tricky combination of moods to bring off, and Trio Wanderer choose the effective approach of indulging the darkness as fully as the light. They couple the trio with six elegiac pieces by Liszt, showing how the composer, whose reputation

is still that of the supreme virtuoso, had later in life become a man who was exploring avenues that would not be fully developed until the 20th century. This is Liszt as most people still don’t know him. See url.ie/55ay