Philharmonic Chamber Music: In search of the “I”

Where does someone come from, where do they belong? – A fatal conflict grows out of this question in Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande: a princess, seemingly without origins, desired by two men. In Hubert Mouton’s arrangement for piano trio, Debussy’s drama of the soul seems particularly intimate and mysterious. Bedřich Smetana’s Piano Trio is a poignant lament in which the composer mourns the death of his young daughter. Erich Korngold creates sumptuous sonorities in his Piano Quintet, which is said to have been written under the influence of his blossoming love for his future wife Luzi.