Natale in maschera

This concert features two trios for clarinet, cello and piano that reveal two facets of late nineteenth-century French music drawing from the same source. In 1888, Vincent d’Indy, following in the footsteps of his mentor César Franck, drew inspiration from the works of Beethoven and Schumann. While adopting a serious structure borrowed from the Germanic model, the composer lays out a narrative through the titles of his four movements. Rita Strohl, in her 1898 trio, fully embraces programme music: Arlequin et Colombine recounts the romantic entanglements of these two characters from Italian commedia dell’arte.