Скачать или смотреть Leo Smit - Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp

Composer: Leopold {Leo} Smit (14 May 1900 -- Sobibor extermination camp, 30 April 1943)
Performers: Virginie Reibel-Escoffier (flute), Florent Bremond (viola), Valeria Kafelnikov (harp)
Year of recording: 2011

Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp, written in 1926.

Leo Smit was a Dutch composer of Portuguese-Jewish descent, who studied piano at the Amsterdam Conservatory, and later composition with Bernard Zweers and Sem Dresden. The Concertgebouw Orchestra performed his work "Silhouetten" at that time. Critics noted ‘the use of peculiar African jazz band sound combinations’. Smit moved to Paris in 1927, then the bustling musical centre of the world. Here his music was influenced by compositions from colleagues like Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky, which can be clearly heard. He was also good friends with Ravel, Milhaud and Honegger. Halfway through the 1930s he discovered his own unique style: a harmonic mixture of lyricism, impulsiveness, spirituality and intellect. He returned to Amsterdam in 1937 and continued his work as a composer during the War. On 27 April 1943, Leo Smit was transported to Sobibor, where he was exterminated three days later.

The Trio for flute, viola and harp was dedicated to the Dutch Jewish harpist Rosa Spier, who was his muse. During the war she was captured and her house was ravished by the Nazis. A neighbour who noticed the harp being taken away, interfered with the soldiers. He gave them money so as to keep the harp. The harp remained with him all throughout the War. Rosa Spier survived the Holocaust. When she came home, she found her harp which the neighbour had kept for her.

Influenced by contemporary French composers such as Debussy and Roussel, this Trio (and his Quintet) are typical of Smit´s style, combining dissonant harmonies and melodies. There is a great resemblance to Debussy's Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp, which was the first trio written for this combination. This work work can be seen as a great hommage to the master. The Trio for flute, viola and harp was edited in 1928 in Paris by Editions Maurice Senart and that same year the Quintet was premiered by the famous 'Quintette Instrumentale de Paris', with flutist René le Roy and the harpist Pierre Jamet, at a concert of the Société Musicale Indépendante.

The Trio is dedicated: "à Madame Rosa Spier".