François-Frédéric Guy's love of Beethoven is well known. After his 32 sonatas and 5 piano concertos, Guy turned to chamber music with violin and/or cello, in collaboration with Tedi Papavrami and Xavier Phillips.

For this concert, the three musicians, in the fullness of their talent, invite us to explore with them the history of the piano trio from one of its earliest masterpieces, the Trio No. 45 by Haydn, a Viennese composer often regarded as the 'father' of chamber music as we understand it today. It was both in recalling this glorious model and in freeing himself from it that Beethoven devised his own trios, one of the absolute peaks of which is none other than the famous Trio No. 5, known as "The Spirits", a title he owes to the strange atmosphere of its central movement: Beethoven was fascinated by Shakespeare's Macbeth, and for a time considered setting some of its most striking pages to music - including those about witches!

At the other end of the century, Brahms took up the torch and, with his Trio No. 3, offers us one of his most absolute chamber music monuments.

J. Haydn, Piano Trio No. 45 in E flat major HOB 15/29
L. van Beethoven, Trio No. 5 in D Maj op. 70 No. 1 "The Spirits
J. Brahms, Trio for piano and strings No. 3, in C minor, Op. 101