Bedrika (Bedřiška)

The death of Bedřiška, Bedřich Smetana’s young daughter, prompted him to write his Piano Trio in G minor (op. 15).
That music has always spoken to me, but I was not as aware of its narrative content as I am now after “listening with my eyes” to its third movement (finale, presto).
I don’t like describing verbally what I perceive in the music I work with/for/to/from, I feel that a description (which is always only one interpretation) can have too much of an impact on the experience of the viewer.
However, I will indulge a little bit and single out the heart-wrenching dialog between the cello (which I mostly see as the voice of the father) and the violin (the daughter's), which unfolds with immense tenderness, and almost unbearable sadness (there were moments during the making of this piece when my eyes would fill with tears).
Yet, and that is to me an essential quality of this magnificent music, Smetana managed to express his grief with immense class, generously giving shape to what Yehudi Menuhin expressed thus:
"Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life, the servant of love."

The music is magnificently served by Isabelle Faust (violin), Mikhail Rudin (cello) and Alexander Melnikov (piano) during a concert recorded live in Barcelona on December 18, 2012.