Dvořák Piano Trio No. 2 in G minor, Op. 26 (1876)

Beach Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 150 (1938)

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Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) was a Czech Austro-Hungarian composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them.” The trio was written shortly after the death of his eldest daughter Josefa, and although Dvorak never wrote that the piece was intended as a memorial it is generally regarded as such. The Presto - Trio movement foreshadows the more well-known Slavonic Dances.

Amy Beach (1867-1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. The Piano Trio was composed in 1938 and is steeped in the developmental processes of late-nineteenth-century models while quoting two Inuit folk songs.