he gives chamber music master classes and, with his colleague 

Claus-Christian Schuster, teaches a seminar course for chamber music majors at the Vienna Conservatory.

A work of immense drive and potency, Dvorak’s Trio in FMinor, Opus 65 carries with it awesome challenges, both musical

and technical. The trio projects a highly dramatic and intense

musical discourse that commences immediately and is aptly

described by Otakar Sourek (from a review by J. Lyons, Editor, American RecordReview) as “an atmosphere of bustling activity and preparation for battle with a strong admixture of

pathos.” The second movement, Allegrettograzioso, has a fantasized inner section that is stabilized briefly with rhythmic

solidarity before and after its appearance. The third movement, Poco adagio, contains one of Dvorak’s most extraordinary

melodies, which caresses and beguiles in the key ofA-flat major, while at the same time giving the feeling of a coexistent

dimension of bitter unrest. The finale, Allegro con brio, exudes

a feeling of deja vu, as it mimics the tension and drama projected in the opening movement. Here, however, the presentation is more clearly defined, as the trio races toward a reconciliation that closes the work triumphantly.

Brahms was fifty-three when he wrote his Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 101 at Hofstetten, a small town in Switzerland near 

the city of Thun. It is the last of only three works he composed in this genre. At its first airing, in the home of Brahms’

close personal friend, the Swiss poet Joseph V Widmann,

Brahms and two of his other friends were the performers. They

were violinist Friedrich Hegar and his brother Julius, a cellist. 

The formal premiere was given on February 26, 1887, in Cologne, with Brahms and members of the Heckmann Quartet.

The trio was received with most favorable responses, but none 

so eloquently stated as that from the respected musical

cognoscente, Elizabeth Herzogenberg, who was also one of

Brahms’ friends. She wrote these words to him, after receiving the score for evaluation: “Few things, I imagine, ever have

been so perfectly proportioned as this trio, which is so passionate and so controlled, so powerful and so lovable, so terse

and eloquent.... Could anyone imagine anything so lovely [as]

the gentle Andante, with its tender dialogue between piano

and strings? The first movement is glorious, with its exquisite second subject, and the working out [is] as fine as it is

short. One can find no fault with it until the end, and then

only because it is over and one would like more. But the pearl

among them all is, of course, the second muted movement,

which is truly irresistible.”

The Fifty-seventh Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2299th Concert

ALTENBERG TRIO

CLAUS-CHRISTIAN SCHUSTER, piano

AMIRAM GANZ, violin MARTIN HORNSTEIN, cello

Sunday Evening, February 21, 1999

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
PROGRAM

Antonin Dvorak Piano Trio in F Minor, Opus 65

(1841-1904) (1883)

Allegro ma non troppo

Allegro grazioso

Poco allegro

Finale: Allegro con brio

INTERMISSION

Johannes Brahms Piano Trio No. 3 in C Minor

(1833-1897) Opus 101 (1886)

Allegro energico

Presto non assai

Andante grazioso

Allegro molto

Named after the Austrian poet Peter Altenberg, the Altenberg

Trio was established in January 1994. Since then the trio has

performed in almost every country in the western world, including Austria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States.

The repertoire of the Altenberg Trio reaches from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day, with a special focus on

Viennese music from the period between 1862 and 1938. Currently, the trio holds the position oftrio-in-residence ofVienna’s

Musikverein, where it presents its own annual concert series.

Pianist Claus-Christian Schuster was born in Vienna in 1952.

He studied in Vienna, Moscow, and Bloomington, Indiana, with

Hans Graf, Dieter Weber, and Vera Gornostayeva. He also studied with Wilhelm Kempffin Positano, Italy. Since winning prizes

in several international piano and chamber music competitions,

Schuster has been making solo and chamber music appearances

with a variety of chamber groups, including the Vienna Schubert

Trio, which he founded. Together with Martin Hornstein, he

conducts a permanent seminar course for chamber music majors

at the Vienna Conservatory.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1952, violinist Amiram Ganz

studied with Israel Chorberg, Ilya Fidlon (a pupil of Leopold

Auer), and Jorge Risi. At age eleven, he won the Jeunesses Musicales Contest, which allowed him to study in the United States

with Richard Burgin. Later Ganz went to the International

Chamber Music Academy ofRome, where his teacher was Alberto

Lysy. Between 1974 and 1979, he was a student ofViktor Pikazen

at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. After a professorship at the Strasbourg Conservatory, Ganz in 1987 founded the

Shostakovich Trio, which has given more than 300 recitals since

its inception.

Born in Vienna in 1954, cellist Martin Hornstein counts as

his most influential teachers Valentin Erben at the Vienna

Musikhochschule and Harvey Shapiro at the Juilliard School of

Music. Hornstein began concertizing while still a student and

from 1985 until 1993 was the cellist ofthe Vienna Schubert Trio,

which performed more than 400 recitals worldwide. Currently,