This recording brings together four Hungarian composers who, each in their own way, contributed to the development of a new national musical style at the beginning of the twentieth century. They managed to write music that was respected internationally and that both nurtured them and raised the general standard of music in Hungary.

Leó Weiner’s (dubbed the ‘Hungarian Mendelssohn’) and Erno Dohnányi’s string trios were composed during their student years, yet both works have become significant milestones in the limited repertoire for this instrumental combination. Elegant and occasionally reminiscent of Brahms, they also incorporate subtle touches of local folklore. Zoltán Kodály, alongside Béla Bartók, one of the most important Hungarian musicians of the century, composed relatively little chamber music, but his Intermezzo, also an early work, evokes the folk music that the composer had begun to collect for his ethnomusicological research. The least familiar and youngest of the composers represented here, László Weiner, met a tragic fate. His Serenade, composed while he was studying with Kodály, reveals the exceptional talent of a composer whose body of work remains small. Less ‘Magyar’ than the other works presented here, his Serenade recalls the intense and concentrated atmosphere of Viennese ‘modernist’ works.

This pair of piano trios has become recognized in recent years as among the finest works by their composers, and they make a complementary pairing despite their contrasting idioms. This new recording also makes a fine showcase for a trio of Italian siblings who have won many prizes in chamber-music competitions and give recitals across Italy as Trio Rigamonti.

Completed in 1846, the G minor Piano Trio of Clara Schumann thus postdates her early piano pieces by decades, and is accordingly a much more mature and accomplished work. She handles the piano-trio dynamic with great skill, balancing her piano part against the strings with sensitivity, and the whole piece is shot through with a pathos that bears comparison with contemporary works by both her husband and her friend Brahms.

While there is no shortage of light and shade to the second theme of the first movement and the playful central Scherzo, the expressive pull of Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio draws the listener towards the piano’s deeply felt introduction to the slow movement, which achieves remarkable pathos within its relatively brief duration. The turbulent finale skilfully balances the scale of the first movement, and the whole piece ranks among the most satisfying of 19th-century piano trios.

Its counterpart in the early years of the 20th century, hardly less rewarding a contribution to the piano-trio literature than contemporary works by Ravel and Rachmaninoff, is the Piano Trio composed in 1921 by Rebecca Clarke. The angst of Clara’s finale is answered and intensified by a gripping confrontation at the start of Clarke’s Trio, which does not so much subside as simmer throughout the first movement. The central Andante flows like a free-running brook and yet is achingly lyrical, before the Allegro vigoroso finale spins the listener through a whirling kaleidoscope of music past and future. These trios make a natural pairing in concert and on record and yet they are still too rarely heard, but Trio Rigamonti are passionate advocates.

Trio Pangea continue their exploration of Portuguese piano trios with this third volume in the series. The repertoire ranges from the late 19th century to the present day. All world premiere recordings.

El Trio is a dream threesome of some of my favorite musicians, all whom have been in my various bands: Horacio ‘El Negro’ Hernández, one of the most versatile and in-demand drummers in the history of Cuban music and jazz; José Armando Gola, a great double bass player, composer, and an expert in every sense of the word who can adapt to any style; and John Beasley, a genius pianist, keyboardist, orchestrator, innovator, whose imagination takes me to another galaxy. El Trio’s sound is organic, contemporary, and supernova.- Chucho Valdés

Hear an episode of the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast on this release!

The Valencia Baryton Project return with their second instalment of Haydn’s fascinating trios for baryton, viola and cello. The baryton is a bowed, stringed instrument similar to the viol but with extra plucked strings that enable the performers to accompany themselves. Volume 1 (8.574188) was widely acclaimed for the ensemble’s well attuned performances and also for showcasing this virtually unknown repertoire from Haydn’s vast output.

Known primarily as a composer of choral music, Lorenzo Perosi was also a priest and much admired by Puccini. Stellar Italian pianist Matteo Bevilacqua is joined once again by members of the Roma Tre Orchestra in these 20th-century Italian chamber music discoveries. Includes world premiere recordings. Perosi’s piano quartets and String Trio No. 2 are available on Naxos 8.574375.

The trio sonatas by Telemann were already regarded by his contemporaries as “models of their kind”, they demonstrate Telemann’s imaginative composing style. Compagnia Transalpina under the direction of Andreas Böhlen highlights the colourful partnership of recorder and oboe, complimented by a rich bass line combining bassoon, cello and harpsichord. Sumptuous ornamentation is applied to the upper lines, inspired by Telemann’s own writing, resulting in dynamic and flamboyant ensemble playing. Recorder player and jazz-saxophonist Andreas Böhlen, professor for recorder at the renowned Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, has combined forces on this recording with leading baroque oboist Andreas Helm, professor in Vienna. Produced as a SuperAudioCD, this album presents versions in high-resolution stereo as well as in multi-channel surround sound.

After many years of creating intensely original solo piano and song repertoire, Robert Schumann made a relatively late entry into chamber music. The piano trio genre was initially inspired by Mendelssohn who was considered by Schumann to be ‘the 19th-century Mozart.’ After testing his creative freedom with the Phantasiestücke Schumann increasingly relished the sonorities and musical discourse of strings and piano, and from the effusive energy and ardour that shines through in Op. 63 to the deep convictions expressed in Op. 110, these works include pages of incredible lyricism and pure enchantment for which Schumann had no rivals.

This is the fifth album of the Feininger Trio, members of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra – after a Dvo/Smetana album, Debussy/Ravel album – and now BRAHMS plus, a series planned on three CDs, highlighting the young composers following the Brahms times, along the Brahms Piano Trios. After Zemlinsky and Krongold, it is now the turn of Ernst Krenek. A 10-minute work in one sole movement such as this Trio-Fantasia by Ernst Krenek provides a welcome, fitting complement to an incredible masterpiece.

The human factor determines the path. The Clarinet Trio op. 114 by Johannes Brahms more or less represents the DNA of the Quantum Clarinet Trio, and the piece was one of the driving forces behind the founding of this young chamber ensemble, whose members first met at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg in 2014. At that time, Italian clarinettist Elena Veronesi had been searching for fellow musicians to collaborate in a late work trio, and she found them in the German cellist Johannes Przygodda and Korean pianist Bokyung Kim. What started as a project has now evolved into a permanent ensemble. This great Brahms trio has continued to be a enterprise in which life converges with art.

Cellists, pianists and clarinettists usually come together when a work requires such a constellation, the line-up going their own separate ways once the project is completed. Compared to piano trios or string quartets, these particular instruments unfortunately rarely come together as a fixed ensemble. The Quantum Clarinet Trio is a welcome exception to the rule, making this encounter with one of Brahms' most important works much more than just a "fleeting liaison".

As a young man, fresh from his first real success as a composer with the opera Aleko, Rachmaninoff was on his way to visit his mentor Tchaikovsky when he saw a crowd gathered outside. The news of Tchaikovsky’s death sent him into a tailspin, and he passed the next few weeks alone, walking and writing this magnificent ‘Trio Elegiaque’ in memory of Tchaikovsky. Although the Trio is an early work it bears the unmistakable imprint of Rachmaninoff’s musical personality.

No understanding of Rachmaninoff is complete without the Trio, and the anniversary year of 2023, 150 years since his birth, Brilliant Classics has produced a magnificent new recording made by the established international collective Trio RoVerde. The trio’s pianist is Ekaterina Litvintseva, ‘the Arctic Circle Pianist’ now resident in Germany, who has several highly praised recordings on Brilliant Classics to her name: ‘Ekaterina Litvintseva has been amassing a distinguished discography – and this…exhibits the combination of sensitivity and self-assurance that have marked her playing up until now.’

Alongside the Trio here are two complementary sets of salon pieces by the young Rachmaninoff, dating from his years as a prodigious student but already infused with the potent strain of yearning Romanticism that would carry his name far and wide: Two Pieces Op. 2 for cello and piano, and two Morceaux de salon Op. 6 for violin and piano.

REVIEW:

The young trio RoVerde documents a live performance of the Trio élégiaque in Studio 150 (Amsterdam) with this album. The interpretation makes a very rounded, well-formed and mature impression.

-- Neue Musikalische Zeitung

The only available complete recording, newly made by a stylish Italian early-music ensemble, of a landmark collection of Baroque chamber music.

Antonio Veracini's innovative music forms the bridge between the styles of Vitali, Bononcinim and Stradella on the one hand, and the post-Baroque fashions of his nephew and of Tartini and Locatelli on the other. He played a central role in the civic musical life of Florence during the later 17th and early 18th centuries.

Veracini’s Opus 1 collection, published 1692, consists of ten ‘church sonatas’ of the newer sort exemplified by Vitali's op. 9 collection published two years later, though Veracini’s style is also comparable with Corelli's church sonatas published during the 1680s. Most of the sonatas have two extended quick movements, each preceded by a slower and gravely expressive introduction. Dance rhythms infuse the finales with momentum, and Veracini is fond of trumpet-like fanfares and echo effects. These ten sonatas made a tremendous impression on Veracini’s fellow composers at the time, and it is a wonder that they have only been recorded in selected form until now.

The complete collection abounds in high-spirited diversity, especially in these recordings made by an ensemble with a track record of success in exploring the lesser-known corners of Baroque repertoire.

Ferdinand Ries may still be known almost exclusively to the musical world as Beethoven’s friend, pupil, secretary and first biographer, but Brilliant Classics have done much to broaden our understanding of this significant figure in the Vienna of the early 19th century with albums of his own compositions, notably his sonatas for violin, cello and flute and his Piano Quintet.

The Op. 28 Clarinet Trio is one of Ries’s best-known pieces, as well it might be for the mellifluous appeal of its writing for all three instruments. The two sonatas for clarinet and piano are much more Romantic-sounding, atmospherically evocative and forward-looking pieces. The Op. 29 work begins with a passionately pleading slow introduction, which segues masterfully into a main Allegro of positively Schubertian vitality. After a brief but deeply felt slow movement, the finale mirrors the first movement’s form and intensifies the tempestuous, troubled expression of the sonata as a whole. The E flat major Sonata Op. 129 is all sunshine compared to Op. 29’s storm and thunder: a delight from start to finish, inflected by the kind of Italianate drama and cantabile that began to make its mark on German and Austrian composers in the 1810s and 20s,

As one of Belgium’s foremost clarinettists, Vlad Weverbergh has his own big band and klezmer group, but he is also a member of I Solisti del Vento, the wind ensemble uniting the finest Belgian wind players. He has made a specialty of reviving, performing, and recording lesser-known treasures of the clarinet repertoire, as well as collecting and playing instruments from the rich history of the clarinet, such as the unusual clarinetto d’amore which he uses on this recording.

Pianist Tomáš Sýkora releases a new album based on an original sound concept mixing traditional jazz trio with electronics. Sýkora’s current band (Tomáš Sýkora – piano, TomášLiška – baskytara, Roman Vícha – bicí) is joined by a distinguished specialist from the sphere of electronic music, Ondrej Mikula alias Aid Kid, who has greatly contributed to its novel sound, making it both original and homogeneous. Together, the musicians have created a dynamic and highly original fusion of jazz and modern electronic music. The music has been enthusiastically received by audiences during a mini-tour undertaken by the band earlier thisspring, before they embarked on recording the project at the Sono Doupe Records studio.Among the hallmarks of Tomáš Sýkora’s new band count the employment of synthesizer as a counterpoint to acoustic piano, the infectious grooves of the rhythm section, improvised passages, the varied timbre and mood of individual compositions, sophisticated musical structures and a novel deployment of live electronics.

With the three piano trios, Op. 1, Ludwig van Beethoven took a genre still largely associated with salon music and raised it up to rival the string quartet. The works are innovative in form as well as in content. From this collection, the Trio in G major, Op. 1 No. 2, appears as a cheerful and engaging work. While it has been said that one could discern ‘the master’s happy youth […] still unclouded, light and frivolous’, hints of ‘the deep seriousness and tender intimacy that would follow’ can also be found. Knowing very well that well-placed dedications could result in princely rewards, Beethoven dedicated his Piano Trio in B flat major, Op. 97, to the Archduke Rudolph of Austria, hence its nickname, ‘Archduke’ Trio. With this work, Beethoven bade farewell to the genre with arguably his most important contribution, a trio of which a critic wrote that in it ‘genius, art, nature, truth, spirit, originality, invention, execution, taste, power, fire, imagination, loveliness, deep feeling and lively jesting entwine in sisterly harmony’.

After the success of its Ravel and Saint-Saëns trios recording [BIS-2219], the Sitkovetsky Trio presents the eagerly awaited second installment of its series devoted to Beethoven’s piano trios.

REVIEW:

This is a delight: sprightly, well-articulated playing which bounds with vitality. The energy of the performance is driven by the pianist Wu Qian, absolutely attentive to all of Beethoven’s quirky markings and sudden sforzandos; the touches of rhythmic subtlety also come from the piano, just momentary holdings-back to shape a phrase or clarify a structure.

The much earlier Trio Op 1 No 2 in G is more firmly in the Haydn tradition, and has a cheery, rather rustic style; Alexander Sitkovetsky’s violin sings in the Largo, then Beethoven adds a Scherzo, before the uproariously funny repeated-note finale – not rushed here, but delivered with just the right manic wit.

-- BBC Music Magazine