A piano trio called Simoens Trio must be deeply Flemish. However, sisters An (violin), Veerle (cello) and Katrijn (piano) have a great love for the defunct Czechoslovakia. Their first CD contained a trio by Martinu in addition to work by Haydn, Schumann and Devreese, but in this program they go all out on the Bohemian card. Smetana was more or less the father of the nineteenth-century Czech national school. His large piano trio in G minor, in which he wrote about the grief for his lost daughter, received personal congratulations from his idol Liszt. A noteworthy cross-connection with the Hungarian Liszt is found in the Simoensen's choice of Haydn's trio in G, which bears the designation 'all'ongarese'. A noble unknown is Vitězslav Novák, a friend of the better known Josef Suk and, like him, a student of Dvořák. If Smetana was the father of the Czech school, Dvořák was certainly its culmination. Novák is considered the most fervent continuer of that tradition.
