Schumann: Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63

Frequent collaborators Leif Ove Andsnes, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff record three of Robert Schumann’s Piano Trios for this 2-CD set. The trio have recorded Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63, Piano Trio No. 2 in f and Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor.

Schumann’s three piano trios were written over a short four-year period (1847–1851) with the first two dating from just a few months apart in 1847.

The First Piano Trio is often regarded as the strongest work of the three, and although it was conceived as a pair with the Second Piano Trio, they differ markedly in tone, with the first having a much darker, and more brooding quality in comparison to the sunnier second.

Schumann’s third and final piano trio was written in 1851, soon after the composer and his family had moved to Düsseldorf. Unfortunately it wasn’t a happy move, and Schumann was beginning to experience symptoms of the mental decline that would lead to his committal to a mental hospital in 1854, and his death two years later.

Michael Gurevich writes: “We have always loved this music for its overwhelming sincerity and serious nature, and are to this day puzzled as to why the trios by Schumann's colleagues, Brahms and Mendelssohn, are so much more often performed than his. Schumann's trios are in no way less attractive than their contemporaries, arguably more skillfully written, and much more extraordinary in their scope.”

Grief overshadowed 1847 for Schumann: dear friend Fanny Mendelssohn died of a stroke in May; the following month his fourth child Emil died at just 16 months and Mendelssohn himself died in November.

This grief permeates the first piano trio with its desperate and yearning melancholy, despite its masterful use of contrasts and optimistic ending. With its symphonic sweep and brilliant counterpoint, this is one of Schumann’s great inspirations, leading Clara his wife to comment: ‘The first movement is one of the most beautiful that I know’, when they first performed it on her birthday in September.

Schumann began working on the second trio before he had completed the first, and in her diary Clara noted: ‘I love it passionately and keep on wanting to play it!’. In the key of F major, it certainly makes a dramatic contrast to the first, lit with high spirits and a breezy spaciousness. Schumann himself commented that ‘it makes a friendlier and more immediate impression.’

Formed in 2003 at the Royal Northern College of Music, the Rhodes Piano Trio won 2nd Prize at the 2011 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. Selected for representation by YCAT in 2010, the Trio has performed widely at venues and festivals across the UK and abroad, giving recitals at Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Purcell Room, Bridgewater Hall, Edinburgh Fringe, Melbourne Recital Centre, the Aldeburgh, Verbier, Aix-en-Provence, Cordes sur Ciel, Festspiele Mecklenburg Vorpommern and Schwetzinger Festivals.

They have appeared on BBC Radio 3, SWR2 in Germany and ABC Classic FM in Australia. During the 2011/12 season the Trio were Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Duncan Gifford is one of Australia´s most notable concert pianists, Violinist Susan Collins is head of strings at the University of Newcastle and former Deputy Concertmaster with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra and Sue-Ellen Paulsen has been principal cellist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra since 1986.

The first and last of Robert Schumann’s three piano trios, opus 63 in D minor and opus 110 in G minor, are here performed on original instruments by Voces Intimae, one of the best ensembles of its type to appear in recent years.

The piano trio Voces Intimae’s 2006 recording of music by Hummel on period instruments for Warner Classics was a major critical success, being picked as a Critic’s Choice for that year on BBC Radio 3. Voces Intimae has also made acclaimed recordings of the trios of Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn Bartoldy, as well as a selection of 19th century Fantasias based on the operas of Vincenzo Bellini, all on period instruments. This recording of Schumann Piano Trios is their debut release on Challenge Classics. The trio has appeared in many major venues including the Wigmore Hall and St John’s Smith Square in London, the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Musik Halle in Hamburg, the Vredenburg in Utrecht, and the Amici della Musica of Florence.

The first two of Robert Schumann’s three piano trios, opus 63 in D minor and opus 80 in F major, were written in 1847. The Piano Trio in G minor opus 110 followed in 1951, and is dedicated to his friend the Danish composer Niels Wilhelm Gade.