Embarking on a journey from the UK, the world-renowned Sitkovetsky Trio makes their Emerald City Music debut performance on our stage. This colorful evening of music explores one of the most storied and complicated love triangles of the classical music world: the relationship of Robert and Clara Schumann and their beloved friend, Johannes Brahms. Known through correspondence, this soap-opera-worthy tale explores degrees of musical respect, infatuation, care, and romantic propriety in the 19th century. Robert Schumann’s Phantasiestüke, Op. 88, was written shortly after his marriage to Clara, a brilliant pianist and composer. While her concert touring career was skyrocketing, he melancholically returned home to regain his confidence, penning an incredible six chamber music works, of which this was the last. Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 was the first chamber music work published by the twenty-one-year-old rising star. He meticulously labored over this work, throwing most drafts in the fire. At the end of his life, with countless masterworks to his name, he still returned to this trio perplexed and republished a revised work, making this piece unique in that it bears the handwriting and genius of both a young and old Brahms.