This morning's program traces three very different relationships between violin, cello, and piano: Mozart's effortless equality among the three voices, Hatzis's headlong collision of nostalgia and passion, and Arensky's elegy transformed into tribute.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Piano Trio in C major, K. 548

Mozart wrote this trio in July 1788, during the same extraordinarily fertile summer that produced his final three symphonies. It was a difficult season at home — debts were mounting, his wife Constanze was unwell, and the family had just moved to cheaper lodgings — yet little of that strain surfaces in the music itself. K. 548 opens with confident, assertive octaves before flamboyant scales sweep the mood toward something sunnier. The central Andante cantabile is warm and lyrical, while the closing Allegro restores the high spirits of the opening. Throughout, piano and strings trade material as true equals — a hallmark of Mozart's late chamber writing.

Christos Hatzis — "Old Photographs"

"Old Photographs" began life as a movement within Constantinople, Canadian composer Christos Hatzis's sprawling multimedia music-theatre work. Opening with an introspective piano theme reminiscent of Schumann, it slides almost without warning into a wild, Piazzolla-style tango. That collision of tender nostalgia and untamed passion has made it the best-known excerpt from Constantinople — closely associated with the Gryphon Trio, and now a staple of the piano trio repertoire.

Anton Arensky — Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32

Arensky composed this trio in 1894 as a tribute to the cellist Karl Davydov, who had died five years earlier. It opens with a richly Romantic Allegro moderato, music that owes an audible debt to Arensky's friend and mentor Tchaikovsky. A buoyant Scherzo follows. The slow third movement, "Elegia," is the emotional core: a muted, sorrowful melody passed quietly between cello, violin, and piano in memory of Davydov. The Finale recalling earlier themes on its way to a turbulent close.