Argyle Trio with Wilma Smith

Wilma says: When Laurence Matheson and Matthias Balzat met in February 2020 to play trio concerts for Wilma & Friends, they hit it off instantly, both musically and personally.

We decided to play more together and the Argyle Trio was born. However, a pandemic intervened to keep us on opposite sides of the planet until these 2023 concerts which will be our long-awaited reunion.

Beethoven’s C minor Trio is such a perfect gem, it’s hard to believe it’s his Opus 1 and it’s the ideal springboard into the totally different world of heart-on-sleeve Slavic romanticism.

Dvorak’s famous “Dumky” trio features a passionately lamenting cello – dumky being the plural of dumka, an epic ballad or song of lament. Less familiar, but a powerful work of unbridled passion, Smetana’s early trio is dedicated to his eldest daughter who had just died aged four from scarlet fever.

He was a generation older than Dvorak and his rhapsodic trio of clearly elegiac character is a milestone of romanticism, in a way forecasting the music that would soon come from Brahms, Dvorak and others.