Smetana: Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15

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).

The Florestan Trio is one of Britian’s best-loved chamber groups, and its many Hyperion recordings are routinely acclaimed as benchmark versions of the repertoire. After delighting listeners and critics with two discs of Dvorák, the ensemble now further explores the Czech piano trio repertoire.

The three works on this CD cover the complete span of what is usually thought of as the Czech school of composition. Smetana, regarded as the founding father, first showed the way to bring traditional dance and song into the mainstream of European composition, forging a national style. Eben, who died in 2007, was one of the most distinguished composers who carried this line to the present day. But, as these three contrasting pieces demonstrate, Czech composers were subject to very different kinds of influence at different times. Smetana’s Piano Trio, an early work, shows more influence from the mainstream giants of the time—particularly Schumann and Liszt—than it does from any ‘folk’ elements. By the time Martinuo wrote his first Piano Trio, he was immersed in the exciting cosmopolitan culture of twentieth-century Paris. And Petr Eben took the neoclassicism of Martinuo and his contemporaries, and developed his own individual approach to it.

To follow up to their critically-acclaimed debut recording of Australian Piano Trios on Melba, the Benaud Trio now immerse themselves in two pieces at the core of the piano trio repertoire: Smetana’s magnificent Trio, op.15 and Dvořák’s beloved Dumky Trio, op. 90. And they conclude with one of their immaculate concert encores, Nicholas Buc’s reworking of Freddie Mercury’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, recorded here for the first time.

Dvořák’s Dumky Trio was one of the first pieces that Benaud Trio performed together as an ensemble and has endured as one of their favourites. Its melodic richness and unabashed romanticism are cherished by the players, Amir Farid (piano), Ewen Bramble (violin), and Lachlan Bramble (cello).

The Benaud Trio is known for exploring a wide range of the musical canon, combining well-known repertoire with the unusual: their version of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ remains an all-time YouTube favourite for piano trio.

The Trio leapt to prominence on winning the Piano Trio prize at the 2005 Australian Chamber Music Competition. As distinguished Australian composer Ross Edwards says, “Benaud Trio is just what Australian music needs - excellence combined with youthful vitality and a dedication to showcasing the new and refreshing the old.”

Combining the talents of three award-winning soloists, the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio was hailed by The New York Times as “Three strong voices, locked in sequence”. This CD of Brahms and Smetana trios is the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio’s first full recording for Bridge Records. Previously, Bridge issued the Trio’s recording of Paul Chihara’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” (BRIDGE9267).

2 CDs for 1

An ensemble of maestros offers four legendary interpretations from a golden age of chamber music playing.

Performances that display “richness, warmth and vitality” (American Record Guide).

Original “Westminster” couplings.

David Oistrakh remarked that chamber music “gives great joy not only to the listeners, but first of all to the performers themselves”. For 17 years after the Second World War, these three great soloists carried on a warm-hearted musical conversation and formed one of the finest chamber ensembles in the world.

Here are four of their legendary interpretations, praised by The American Record Guide at the time for their ”richness, warmth, and vitality” (Chopin and Ravel) and for their “well-integrated performances” (Dvoøák and Smetana). (Review quotes from The American Record Guide, 1957).

Since their recording debut in 1991 the Grieg Trio has established itself as one of the leading ensembles in the world, with a number of highly acclaimed releases. Over the years It has performed at all of the world’s great concert venues, including the Concertgebouw, the Schauspielhaus and the Carnegie Hall. It is a regular visitor to London’s Wigmore Hall and has played there many times to great acclaim, most recently on the 23rd of February this year in a programme featuring works by Beethoven, Shostakovich and Brahms. The group’s new release, which includes trios by Tchaikovsky and Smetana, as well as a rarely recorded piece by Grieg, the Andante Con Moto, is being made available as a double SACD hybrid package for the price of one.

Edvard Grieg’s only essay in the genre was completed, according to the date on the manuscript, on 17 June 1878. The Andante Con Moto in C minor is a substantial piece apparently intended as the slow movement of a piano trio, though in fact its contrasts of character and alternation of slow with faster tempi make it an effective single-movement work. It is certainly no sketch or draft but a fully-realized piece in every way, and of a quality comparable to Grieg’s other, better known, chamber compositions.

Bedrich Smetana is one of the most prominent Czech national composers. His piano trio of 1855 was written in memory of his daughter ‘Frizi’, who died of scarlet fever the same year. The work is spontaneous, rhapsodic and deeply personal in its musical character.

Tchaikovsky’s trio Op. 50 holds a special position. The catalyst for this work was the death of the pianist and pedagogue Nicolai Rubinstein. Tchaikovsky stated that it was “a new form of music that I never have written before”. Op. 50 is a highlight in the romantic literature, both in the pure musical sense and because of the fact that the whole piece lasts for more than 46 minutes. The Grieg Trio received the Critics’ Award in 1993 for their performance of this epic piano trio.