This release presents some of some of the best-known works from the Renaissance, recorded by Vox Luminis and originally included in various boxed sets on historical themes (Flemish Polyphony, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Music in Europe at the time of the Renaissance) that Ricercar has released over the last years. Vox Luminis was established 15 years ago; today, the ensemble uses its sparkling traits to enhance the world of early music! The push was made in 2004 by Lionel Meunier – bass and founding base of Vox Luminis. The objective is to gain access to the Light through the Voice. Every year, the ensemble releases on average two discs and offers its audience more than 60 concerts on Belgian, European and international stages.

There is no better recordings of the strio trio repertoire than those you will find here. - David Hurwitz (ClassicsToday.com)

In 2007 Frank Peter Zimmermann was able to realize his long-cherished dream to establish a string trio, together with Antoine Tamestit and Christian Poltéra. Three individually superb string players do not necessarily add up to a top-flight trio – even if they all play on instruments by Stradivarius, as here – but Trio Zimmermann immediately made a name for itself at international festivals and prestigious concert venues.

In 2010 the trio released its first album – with Mozart's seminal Divertimento – to critical acclaim. (More than 10 years later, that recording was the top recommendation in the Record Review series Building a Library on BBC Radio 3.) On following offerings, the ensemble explored the later repertoire for string trio: two discs with Beethoven's contributions to the genre, and a third with works by Hindemith and Schoenberg which have garnered distinctions such as Diapason de l’Année, the Chamber Award from BBC Music Magazine and a ‘Jahrespreis’ from the German Record Critics’ Award association. For their fifth disc to date the trio went back in time, however, as the three members together prepared a performing version of Bach's Goldberg Variations, described as ‘a triumph of combined technical ingenuity and musical insight’ in The Strad. These five discs have now been collected into a boxed-set retrospective, offering lovers of chamber music more than 5 hours of glorious music-making, in top-notch sound and including the original booklets with full documentation.

Past praise for previously released albums included in this set:

Bach: Goldberg Variations

The expertise and fluency of the Zimmermann's playing is evident. Their approach to dynamics is refreshingly flexible, and all three players bring a graceful approach to ornamentation.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Beethoven: String Trios, Op. 9, Nos. 1-3

These musicians are in command of the meticulously written extremes in expression, sforzandos not indiscriminately stabbed at but gauged according to the contexts in which they appear. Tempi are gauged to a nicety too. In sum, they do Beethoven proud throughout this exceptionally fine disc.

-- Gramophone

Hindemith & Schoenberg: String Trios

The Trio Zimmermann play them both Hindemith works with such energy, panache, and attention to the minutest detail that they are totally convincing and make a perfect foil to the rigors of the Schoenberg that follows.

-- The Guardian

Trio Zimmermann play Mozart & Schubert

The Zimmerman Trio plays with remarkably accurate intonation and a ravishing tone that’s also mindful of the Classical style. In other words, they don’t lay it on too thick, but they aren’t afraid to let the melodic lines sing. Schubert’s single-movement trio makes the perfect coupling.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

Beethoven: String Trios, Op. 3; Serenade, Op. 8

The Zimmermann Trio offers what must be the finest recording of Beethoven's Op. 3 since the classic mono Heifetz/Primrose/Piatigorsky version. They bring out all of the first movement’s requisite brio, paying heed to the syncopated rhythmic underpinnings that support the scampering triplet passages. The ensemble lightens its sonority for the Andante without sacrificing body and definition, while they articulate the Menuetto’s two-note phrase groups and subito dynamics in strict tempo yet in a way that’s oblivious to the bar lines. While the Finale is a model of controlled ferocity, the musicians are not afraid to let the lyrical sections sing out sweetly (never cloyingly).

Power and delicacy effortlessly coexist in the Serenade’s opening March, while subtle dynamic gradations distinguish the Menuetto’s loud arpeggiatted tuttis. The Adagio’s long unison lines offer cogent proof that one can employ minimum vibrato and still retain a focused and alive sonority. The March returns da capo at the end of the piece, with slightly more emphatic fortes and lighter pianos this time around. The warmth, clarity, and ambient realism of BIS’s surround-sound engineering holds equal appeal when experienced in conventional stereo playback mode. This release is not just a worthy follow-up to the Zimmermann Trio’s magnificent Mozart K. 563 and Beethoven Op. 9 Trio traversals, but a reference disc in its own right. Bravo!

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

The melting beauty of Arcangelo Corelli's justifiably famous "Pastorale" movement from his Concerto grosso in G minor, Op. 6, No. 8, seems to have suggested the idea for this very appealing recording of Italian Baroque music. The explicit pastoral Christmas theme of both the Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti's 'Cantata pastorale' invites the listener to hear the trumpet featured in Alessandro Stradella's Sonata as a seraphic herald and the oboe featured in the concertos of Alessandro Marcello and Tomaso Albinoni as a shepherd's adoration. Under Helmut Mueller-Bruehl's sensitive direction, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra gives precise and joy-filled readings of this festive music.

In a follow-up to its extremely successful album Her Voice, the Neave Trio on A Room of Her Own once again champions the works of female composers. The only non-French composer on the album is Ethel Smyth whose Piano Trio, one of her earliest works, was composed in 1880. Like many of her works from this era, it shows a clear nod to the Austro-German influences of her studies in Leipzig, particularly of Brahms. Cecile Chaminade was born just a year before Smyth, and her First Piano Trio was written in the same year as Smyth’s. The Paris première was very well received by the critics, and the Trio was published a year later. Germaine Tailleferre’s Piano Trio began life in 1916 – 17 as a work in three movements, and then gathered dust for over sixty years, until a commission from France’s Ministère de la Culture, in 1978, enabled Tailleferre to revive and re-imagine it. By then in her mid-eighties, Tailleferre replaced the original second movement and added a fourth. The Trio is an excellent example of her compositional style – a voice that remained consistent though her long compositional career. Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps and D’un soir triste are perhaps now better known in their orchestral versions: this recording proves that the two pieces work equally well at either scale. As they are among the last compositions of her short life (she died of chronic illness at twenty-four), we are left to imagine what she might have written had she lived longer.

REVIEW:

These chamber works are still not in the mainstream. The Neave Trio put their case eloquently.

-- The Guardian (U.K.)

Welsh pianist Llyr Williams is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence and the expressive and communicative nature of his interpretations. The complete 8 album collection of Llyr Williams’ Schubert series – previously released as individual digital volumes over 2019 to 2020. These recordings were made following a critically-lauded recital series at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama by Williams. Together they showcase the detailed examination given by Williams to these pieces, which is “warm, yet detailed” (Piano International). The accompanying booklet includes background notes on each piece, as well as an essay by US composer William Bolcom on his completion of Schubert’s unfinished Sonata in C major, D. 840. “These precious five minutes alone are worth a whole string of concerts” (Le Devoir) “ease into melting loveliness” (Classical Source) “Remarkable artistry and authority” (The Guardian)

REVIEW

In live performances such as these, one would expect a certain amount of casualness and distraction, a tendency to slur over passages, rush an accelerando to impress the audience and miss the occasional staccato dot or complete grace note. That is not the case. Williams brings to each work, no matter how slight or monumental, the same integrity and an honoring of the composer’s voice. Technically, I can’t help but be impressed, even amazed, by the strength of his playing and the consistency of pressure on each finger. Yet, there is an overarching individual expressiveness that conveys, as few others can, the unique wistfulness of the Schubert “sound”, the composer’s yearning for recognition and, later, for health, and knowing full well what little time he had in which to accomplish so much. I have never before heard the essential Schubert discerned and revealed at this level of perfection.

–ConcertoNet.com (Linda Holt)