Tobias PM Schneid teaches music theory at the University of Würzburg, has received international awards and is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. But the habitus of the elite avant-garde composer is alien to him. The former student of Heinz Winbeck has found an unmistakable language. He has never submitted to a dogma. His music is a space of freedom, knows no blinkers, and takes influences from jazz and rock as well as the achievements of the avant-garde. And - as the works on this album show - it always seeks dialogue with the past.
Schneid ventures into the terrain of inner conflict in String Quartet No. 3 »Schumann« with the help of quotations especially from Schumann's late work, which was created under the influence of his mental illness.
Unlike in the Schumann Quartet, concretely identifiable quotations play a role in the Piano Trio No. 3 »Amadé« only a minor role. The intellectual center here is rather a letter that Mozart wrote to his father in 1787.
Im Piano Trio No. 4 »Testament« Schneid was touched on the one hand by the "lament about Beethoven's fateful hearing disorder and the social isolation that came with it" and on the other hand by the "indications of a hopeful potential for strength that wrests its own right to exist from fate". In a similar way, the trio (dedicated to the memory of Heinz Winbeck) developed into a "work about failure and the courage to counter this failure with a courageous new beginning".
Among the works on this album, the String Trio No. 2 »Pas de Trois« It has a special role in that it is the only one that does not seek dialogue with the past, but rather addresses dialogue itself. If Goethe defines the string quartet as a place where "four sensible people talk to each other," then Schneid's string trio is the place where three people talk past each other.