Dvorak - Trio Fontenay: The Piano Trios (2CD)

Antonin Leopold Dvorak (1841 - 1904) was a Czech composer. Following the nationalist example of Bedrich Smetana, Dvorak frequently employed features of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia (then parts of the Austrian Empire and now constituting the Czech Republic). Dvorak's own style has been described as 'the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them'.

Dvorak's last and best-known piano trio, No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90, has six movements, each of which is a Dumka; the piece is sometimes called the Dumky-Trio.
Dumka is a musical term introduced from the Ukrainian language, with cognates in other Slavic languages. The word "dumka" literally means "thought". Originally, it is the diminutive form of the Ukrainian term duma, a Slavic (specifically Ukrainian) epic ballad generally thoughtful or melancholic in character. Ukrainian and other Slavic classical composers drew on the harmonic patterns in the folk music of their countries to inform their more formal classical compositions. A natural part of the process of transferring the traditional folk form to a formal classical milieu was the appropriation of the Dumka form by Slavic composers, most especially by Antonin Dvorak.