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Trio sonatas are the ideal music for the lockdown

Warm and uplifting, they are built for the spare room, not the concert hall

“A SYMPHONY MUST be like the world,” the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler wrote; “it must contain everything.” Today, however, the world seems remote. Everything might be too much to bear. So put aside those all-encompassing operas and immersive string quartets and instead choose the music built on a scale for life under lockdown: the trio sonata.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Discover trio sonatas”

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