Artur Malawski was known in the years after 1945 as one of the most striking personalities on the Polish music scene – his ballet- pantomime Wierchy (The Mountain Tops, 1950) attained the status of a key work, which manifested the innovative force of a new Poland resurrected from the traumata of war, destruction and the Holocaust. Despite this, Malawski never seems to have enjoyed the special favour of the “cultural politicians”. Very soon after Malawski’s early death, the succeeding generation of composers blacked-out his renown, and his name appeared only very rarely in concert programmes. There may well have been political reasons for this neglect – a composer whose last symphonic work bore the title Hungaria 1956 must hardly have aroused confidence in the communist powers-that-be.
Krzysztof Meyer is one of the most remarkable composers to appear at the time of the historic Polish music festivals in the mid 1960s known as “Krakow Music Spring” and “Warsaw Autumn”. Indeed, he experienced his first great successes at these festivals, firstly with the First Symphony in Krakow in 1964, and then in 1965 with the First String Quartet in Warsaw, Meyer is quite aware of the connections that exist between him and the work of his older contemporaries and compatriots, and he dedicated his first three “official” string quartets to the three composers who influenced his career, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutoslawski and Dmitri Shostakovich. His trio is without doubt one of the most gripping trio compositions of the last decades. Its closeness to the ideas and concepts of Dmitri Shostakovich, above all to his late work, never restricts the free flight of the composer’s original ideas and his unique sound.
Since its official debut during the Salzburg Mozart Week in January 1994, Altenberg Trio Wien has become one of the few full-time piano trios in the world of chamber music. It has in more than 1000 performances earned the reputation of one of the most daring and consistent ensembles in its field. In addition to a large number of other smaller scale pieces, (piano quartets & quintets, duos, triple concertos, vocal chamber music), Its repertoire includes more than 200 piano trios, among them many pieces which the Altenberg Trio suggested and first performed itself.
