I created this work because of my love for the music of Felix Mendelssohn's dazzling Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49, composed between February and July of 1839. Mendelssohn was in fact the first pianist to perform it at its premier on February 1, 1840. Robert Schumann said, "It is the master-trio of our time." He went further to say, "[he] is the Mozart of the nineteenth century, the most illuminating of musicians, who is able to see through the contradictions of our age and is the first to reconcile them."
I feel the expansive, song-like material in the first movement lends itself to a multitude of choreographic ideas. The first movement, entitled "'Winged Hearts," has rich keyboard writing along with the rhapsodic textures of the violin and cello that makes dancing a pleasure. The suspended "Andante" has been described as a song without words - a "Suspended in Time" pas de deux. The Mendelssohn's trade mark 'fairy' like movement is among the finest examples of these Scherzo movements. I titled this movement "A Fleeting Moment". Like Mendelssohn's instrumentation, it is choreographed for a trio of dancers. The joyful finale, like so many of Mendelssohn's final movements, suggests a Gypsy-like character dance of passion and tenderness. Again, I felt the spontaneity of the music and titled it simply, "Spontaneity".
