Obsession is a trait shared by at least the majority of creative geniuses. In the case of the great German Romantic, Robert Schumann, one could certainly describe his laser focus during the early years of his career on the composition of piano works as weighty as they were long as obsessive (without his necessarily having thought of it in those terms). When the turning point came, in 1842, he would throw himself into the composition of chamber music with equal dedication. The first of his three Piano Trios was written a little later, in the spring and summer of 1847, at a time when the composer was putting a major mental health crisis (1844) behind him, though sadly not for good. As is the case in most of Schumann's works written in classical forms, this Trio has no compunction about placing the imperatives of structure at the service of his imagination and of emotional transitions. Interestingly, Schumann once expressed the opinion that the old forms of classicism had already borne all the fruit they had to yield, though he simultaneously considered it the duty of every composer of his generation to tackle these forms on occasions, so as to sharpen their creative animus and their imagination and artistry in general. And this is precisely what he did here, in this Trio, when he elected to work within the bounds of traditional forms, but went out of his way to also incorporate innovative elements into the music. Such structural innovation is obvious in the fact that only the first of the work's four movements is in the primary key of D minor, and in that an entirely new theme is introduced into the development section of the first movement. Structure aside, however, the more substantive elements that make the work so fascinating to listen to each and every time include the unexpected places the harmony ends up (especially in the sombre slow movement), the rhythmic insistence of the dotted rhythms (second movement), and the hyper-emotional drama of the musical gestures throughout.

The life of the composer Mieczysław Weinberg, a Polish Jew, was full of bitterness, misery and tragedy. At the age of twenty, in September 1939, he was forced to flee Warsaw in the dead of night, when he heard that Nazi forces had invaded his homeland, and seek refuge in the Soviet Union. He was the only member of his family to survive the war, as his mother and sister met tragic deaths in a concentration camp. In the Soviet Union, Weinberg lived for a time in Minsk and then Tashkent before settling permanently in Moscow. There, he would come into contact with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, which proved to be an artistic revelation for the composer and set its seal irrevocably on his musical thinking. He later met the great Soviet composer in person and would become both a close friend and regular artistic collaborator. But his life in the Soviet Union was not always easy in the post-war era: he was often targeted by the Stalinist regime both as a Jew (Stalin swerved towards anti-Semitic policies on numerous occasions) and as an artist who did not fully comply with the principles of socialist realism. In 1953, he was arrested on charges of promoting "bourgeois Jewish nationalism" and Shostakovich himself had to intervene in his defence. Released after Stalin's death, he was extremely active as a composer in the 1950s and 1960s, when much of his output was in the sphere of film music, some of which achieved considerable popularity. However, his music has lost some of its appeal since the 1970s, and a large part of his oeuvre (which includes 7 operas, 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets, concertos and chamber music) remains in obscurity today, despite its undeniable value.

Weinberg's style certainly reveals significant similarities with that of Shostakovich, which is not to say it lacks a wholly personal stamp of its own, in both its lyrical and more modernist aspects. Generally speaking, Weinberg's writing is more emotional than Shostakovich's, and less daring on a structural level. The Piano Trio was written in 1945 and dedicated to the composer's wife, Natalia. It is one of those works by Weinberg that strongly recall Shostakovich. Written about a year after Shostakovich's famous Second Piano Trio, it clearly shares a similar aesthetic with that epic work. The first movement opens in a harsh, bleak manner – a sonic depiction of the tragic events of the War. But the aria that follows offers a moment of tender "human" respite (which some say stems from his love for Natalia), before the stormy second movement makes its tumultuous entrance with a wild dance reminiscent of a tarantella – a maniacal death march pierced by sounds that seem to have come straight from the battlefield. The piano opens the lyrical third movement with a melancholy theme, while the violin (played pizzicato) and cello develop an interesting dialogue. The finale is a lively rondo which includes a driving fugue, whose theme is first presented on the cello. The tension mounts to a near frenzy, but then the music suddenly becomes lighter and gentler, with the work ending up on a dreamlike note, leaving a ray of hope behind in an otherwise dark and dismal landscape.