Dvořák finished the trio in February 1891 and played the piano at its first performance in Prague that April, with Ferdinand Lachner (violin) and Hanuš Wihan (cello), at a concert marking his honorary doctorate from Charles University. He then took it on a farewell tour of some forty concerts around Bohemia and Moravia, shortly before he left for the United States. Simrock published it in 1894; Brahms read the proofs while Dvořák was in America.
Dumka (plural dumky) is a Ukrainian word for a kind of lament; by Dvořák’s time composers used it for a dark, inward-looking piece lit by livelier episodes. Dvořák drops sonata form altogether and writes six dumky, most of them swinging between a slow, sad section and a fast, cheerful one. The first three run on without a break, like one long first movement; the last three are separate movements in distant keys.
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