Trio Wanderer

A concerto for four? The Triple Concerto may well be one of Beethoven's most enigmatic works: some commentators have seen it as no more than a vast rhapsody intented to show off the virtuosity of three hand-picked soloists. But when a piano trio that regularly plays together turns its attention to the piece, it takes on a quite different aspect: it becomes a genuine "Concerto for trio and orchestra". In fact the "Triple" shares the same Beethovenian ideal as the heroic quest that is Egmont: and in the case of the incidental music for his drama Goethe recognised – for once! – that the composer had "penetrated his intensions with admirable genius"… This title was released for the first time in 2001.

‘I am working quietly away at a Trio which I hope will drive to despair all those unlucky enough to hear it. I shall need the whole summer to perpetrate this atrocity; one must have a little fun somehow.' Should we take literally this declaration of intention by Camille Saint-Saëns. Twenty-five years after a Trio no.1 that was already an indisputable success – with its marvellous scherzo, regulated like clockwork – Saint-Saëns showed everything he was capable of in the second : premiered on 7 December 1892, it did not fail to surprise listeners: after all, one must have a little fun somehow!This title was released for the first time in 2005.

This resolutely elegiac disc offers an opportunity to discover, through their chamber music, the dark side of two composers who are not often associated. Smetana’s primary purpose was to give utterance to a cry of pain at his daughter’s death through the appropriate medium of the piano trio. In the Liszt pieces, elegies and funeral gondolas remind us of the deeply human and tormented nature of a composer haunted by death and who, more than any other, was capable of expressing its icy smile. The Trio Wanderer realise all this in deeply moving performances.

Since 1999, the Trio Wanderer has released, on Le Chant du Monde and harmonia mundi, a series of recordings that have received a warm welcome from the press, winning notably a best of the year award from Le Monde de la Musique for its CD of Haydn trios, and numerous international awards for Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet and the trios of Shostakovich and Saint-Saëns. Its recording of the Brahms piano trios was honoured by a Diapason d’Or of the year 2006 and the Midem Classical Award in the chamber music category in January 2007. In 2009, the Trio Wanderer was voted ‘Best chamber music ensemble’ at the Victoires de la Musique for the third time (after 1997 and 2000).

Jean-Marc Phillips plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1738). Raphaël Pidoux plays a violoncello by Gioffredo Cappa (1680).

Gabriel Fauré was a remarkable pianist who included his instrument in almost all his compositions, but seldom as a soloist: he preferred to combine it with chamber ensembles to produce the intimate atmosphere he so favoured. Until the early 1870s, Parisian musical life revolved around opera, to the detriment of instrumental works. Existing institutions paid little attention to the scores of young French composers.The Société Nationale de Musique, founded in 1871 and presided by Camille Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine, set itself the mission of promoting French music and offering a forum for the dissemination of orchestral and chamber works. Its founder members also included César Franck, Lalo, d'Indy, Duparc, Massenet, and Fauré, who became secretary in 1874. In an interview with Le Petit Parisien in 1922, he spoke of the importance of the Société: “The truth is that, before 1870, I would not have dreamt of composing a sonata or a quartet. Only when Saint-Saëns founded the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871, whose primary aim was to put on works by young composers, did I set about doing so.” And in fact almost all Fauré's chamber works had their premieres under the auspices of the SNM: the two violin sonatas, their counterparts for cello and piano, the piano quartets, the First Piano Quintet, and the Piano Trio.

Since 1999, the Trio Wanderer has released, on the Le Chant du Monde and harmonia mundi labels, a series of recordings that have received a warm welcome from the press. Born in 1979,Antoine Tamestit studied with the Tokyo Quartet at Yale University and Tabea Zimmermann in Berlin. He was a BBC New Generation Artist (2005-07) and a Borletti- Buitoni Trust scholarship holder in 2006. He made his debut at the Lucerne Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti in 2008. The Berlin Konzerthaus has offered him a residency in 2009/10. He will premiere in several cities (Berlin, Vienna, Graz, London) a concerto written for him by Olga Neuwirth.

The four piano trios and the first of the three piano quartets cover a large part of the career of Johannes Brahms, from the youthful convulsions of the Trios op.8 and op. posth. (dating from 1854) to the masterpiece of late Romantic literature constituted by op.101 of 1886. A repertoire that is naturally close to the hearts of the Wanderer Trio.