Join us for this fantastic program featuring two amazing Piano Trios that have been unjustly neglected, largely because they were composed by two women, Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn.  These are both sweeping, powerful, and emotional works that reveal a true sense of structure and lyricism.  Amazingly, both were written in the same year, 1846.  Clara had married her beloved Robert in 1840 and had already had four children.  While she still maintained her career as one of the great piano virtuosos of the time, the composing that had been so much a part of her life before her marriage had faded away.  This piece gave her a renewed sense of creativity and was one of the longest works she composed.  Sadly, she herself denigrated the work after seeing a Trio written by Robert in the same year, but this is a piece that definitely should be part of the regular Trio repertoire.  Fanny Mendelssohn’s Trio was also one of her largest works but also one of her last.  Sadly, she would die from a stroke just a few months after composing it.  She had composed over 400 works during her lifetime, but had received very little encouragement from her father and brother, who believed a woman’s place was as a wife and mother.  She had only just started to publish a few pieces, even without Felix’s support, and had received several very positive reviews.  Felix found this manuscript after her death and thankfully had it published himself.  We know you will love these very dramatic and soulful works.  Our good friends from Israel, Ralph Allen and Iris Jortner, have returned once again to help bring these pieces to a larger public.