The Wilkomirski Trio, in its current iteration, was established in March of 2015. Celina Kotz, Maciej Kulakowski and Lukasz Trepczynski received the honuor to bear the name of the Wilkormirski Trio, from the Wilkomirski siblings, Professor Dr Honoris Causa Wanda Wilkomirska and Josef Wilkomirski. The Wilkormirski Trio designation has been active for more than sixty years.

Anton Arensky pursued his studies at the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and he became the teacher of some of the greatest musicians following his generation, including Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin. He wrote the Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor in 1894, as a memorial to the cellist Karl Davidoff, who had been director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire. Thus, the cello plays the prominent role, having most of the principal themes and often eclipsing the violin. On occasion, the piece has been considered a duo for cello and piano with obbligato violin.

Arensky composed the Piano Trio No. 2 in 1905, nine years after the D minor Trio. This particular work marks a considerable advance in Arensky’s compositional techniques, though the outline of sonata form is present, it is subsumed into a more seamless entity. The mood is deeply serious and thoughtful throughout with the main five-note theme repeated, altered and separated, acting both as the focus and the basis for an informal process of variation.

Alixandra Porembski, English Language Annotator