Karl Markovics & Eggner Trio

"We all come from Gogol's Overcoat," the author Fyodor Dostoevsky bowed to the novella published in 1842, which became a key work for many subsequent Russian writers. The story revolves around the clerk Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, who earns his living as a copyist in a ministerial department in St. Petersburg. His modest and lonely, yet not dissatisfied, daily life is entirely filled with writing work. When the need for a new overcoat arises, unrest disrupts his established routines: although Akaki has to save money for the garment by going without, the acquisition opens up a whole new perspective on the beauty of life. However, the joy is short-lived: during a nighttime mugging, Akaki's new overcoat is stolen – a shock from which he cannot recover. Gogol's equally touching and biting social critique is brought to life by the Austrian actor Karl Markovics. The Eggner Trio provides the "sound of St. Petersburg": Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 1 was composed in 1923 in the Russian metropolis, while the Piano Trio No. 2, composed twenty years later, had its world premiere here in 1944.