In its recording cycle, the Feininger Trio is pairing each of the three piano trios written by Brahms with a work by another Viennese composer: Alexander Zemlinsky, Ernst Krenek, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, respectively. Brahms’s three piano trios are among the genre’s crowning achievements, and the members of the Feininger Trio were interested in exploring how the piano trio genre developed in the master’s wake. This is volume 2 and couples Brahms' Piano Trio no. 2 with Korngold's enfant prodige Trio op. 1.

The Busch Trio continues its Schubertian explorations in two works brimming with melodic invention and nostalgia: the Trio in B flat and the famous ‘Trout’ Quintet in A major. But to those who see Schubert as the embodiment of the gemütlich (cosy) face of Vienna, his output, and especially his chamber music, responds with a spirituality, an intensity, and sometimes even a fury that are far removed from the atmosphere of the ‘Schubertiade’.

Despite the ‘effortless musicianship’ (The Times) and great emotional sensitivity ascribed to the Busch Trio by the press and their loyal fans, these three musicians are guided by the head as much as the heart when playing music, being very much aware of what they are doing. ‘The more you know, the more freedom you feel’ is one of the key maxims of the ensemble.

REVIEW:

The Busch Trio rivals classics recordings by, among others, Rudolf Serkin and the Marlboro Festival ensemble's, for musicianship and might be the most varied and imaginative of all. In addition, the recorded sound is the best of the lot, both for balancing the five instruments and for beauty. The tempos in all three performances are close, so that is a non-issue. There’s such a palpable delight communicated by the playing that I find this new account irresistible. The variations on “Die Forelle” that give the quintet its nickname are done with the lyrical phrasing of an exquisite Lieder singer. This testifies to the virtue mentioned above, that we hear a unified musical mind in the interpretation. In other hands the “Trout” Quintet can veer into sameness by the end, which the Busch Trio counters with a finale that sparkles exuberantly.

I have no hesitation in ranking both performances at or very near the top of a crowded catalog. The old guard fades, and it is heartening that the new generation can express Schubert as beautifully as anyone from the past.

-- Fanfare

Enthusiasm, affection and style...all those qualities are here again in abundance [on the Busch Trio's second Schubert album], the B flat Trio radiant where the E flat is motivically combative, the Trout Quintet perhaps the sine qua non of works composed for companionable music-making.

The striding opening of the Trio is suitably outgoing here, vividly transmitting its melodic generosity, but this ensemble’s extroversion does not ignore the clouds that cover its essentially sunny outlook on occasion. The mood is appropriately tender in the Andante, quizzical in the Scherzo and urbane in the finale. The Busch Trio’s sympathy with this repertoire feels absolute, their communicative ardour evident throughout the performance.

The two trios are works on the largest scale, so don’t often come with much more than brief couplings to add a few minutes to the running time. So it’s a blessing indeed to have the B flat Trio coupled with a whole Trout Quintet, and not one that’s rushed through, either. The Trout is one of those works that seems indestructible: it’s virtually impossible for even the most half-hearted performance not to convey bags of charm and charisma. When it’s played with the affection that the Busch lavish upon it, it’s irresistible. The recording smooths the edges off the piano sound but enables the contribution of each player to be heard ideally. Omri Epstein’s piano bubbles and ripples infectiously but the whole is anchored by the buoyant bass of Naomi Shaham. A true delight from start to finish.

-- Gramophone

The six Sonatas, which are often described as ‘Trio Sonatas for Organ,’ hold a unique place in Bach’s oeuvre. In a sense, ‘trio’ is the most natural organ texture: right hand, left hand, and feet each takes one line of counterpoint. However, in the six Sonatas, the contrapuntal lines are granted a degree of independence that is unmatched in Bach’s surviving organ music. Thus, they are atypical of Bach’s output for the instrument, and indeed of organ music in general. The Sonatas are, in effect, ‘ensemble music for one player’ – indeed, several movements originated as actual ensemble pieces. To Bach’s contemporaries, this transplanting of the secular, instrumental trio sonata genre onto the organ would have seemed rather daring. After all, the organ was, first and foremost, a liturgical instrument, with its own venerable repertoire tradition.

Born into a noble family, Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) entered the Ursuline Convent in the Piedmontese city of Novara at the age of 16. Having taken holy orders she lived there for the rest of her life as a religious sister, later its director of music and Mother Superior. She evidently showed musical promise from an early age, as the first of her published collections of music dates from as early as 1640, when she was just 20 years old.

Following the Brilliant Classics portrait of Isabella Leonarda’s vocal output from Cappella Artemisia directed by Candace Smith (96626), the all-female ensemble of Giardino di Delizie presents a set of 11 Trio Sonatas which was published in 1683 as the composer’s Op.16. Isabella dedicated it to the Virgin Mary with a devotional preface: ‘If these pieces do not please the World, I shall be content if You like them, because You appreciate the heart above the intellect.’ In fact, Isabella’s music greatly pleased the rest of the world at the time: according to one French collector, ‘All the works of this illustrious and incomparable Isabella Leonarda are so beautiful, so charming, so brilliant, and at the same time so knowledgeable and so wise ... that my great regret is not to have them all.’ While the Sonatas do not exhibit the bold contrasts or rich harmony of her contemporary Corelli, they nonetheless rise above many other contemporary examples of the genre, not least in the improvisatory freedom of their writing, especially in the slow movements. They are written for two violins, violone (i.e. cello or bass) and organ continuo, which makes them all trio sonatas in which the violone part dialogues on equal terms with the violins.

Black Oak Ensemble, the Chicago-based string trio with an international following, treats listeners to a double-album of stylish and often witty French treasures written between the World Wars. The ensemble offers seven rarely heard delicacies from the 1920s and 30s, including world premiere recordings of trios by Henri Tomasi, Robert Casadesus, and Gustave Samazeuilh, along with works by Jean Cras, Emile Goué, Jean Françaix, and Gabriel Pierné. Most were written for and dedicated to the virtuosic Trio Pasquier, which ranked among the era’s chamber music superstars.

Tomasi’s Mediterranean roots are heard in the Provençal folk melody referenced in his Trio à cordes en forme de divertissement, noted for its colorful, kaleidoscopic finale. Casadesus’s Trio à cordes combines fine craftsmanship and poetic sincerity. Samazeuilh, a disciple of Claude Debussy, wrote his Suite en trio in the form of a Baroque dance suite. Celtic-infused folk music of his native Brittany emerges in Cras’s Trio pour violon, alto et violoncelle, as does an homage to Beethoven’s Op. 132 string quartet. Goué wrote his Trio pour violon, alto et violoncelle, energized with folk-dance elements, on the eve of his World War II army deployment. Françaix’s Trio displays his trademark textural clarity, agility, and sense of humor. Pierné’s Trois pièces en trio has even more fun with the listener with its satirical finale conjuring intoxicated, stumbling house cats out on the town.

REVIEWS:

Occasionally you hear a commentator use the term “accessible” to describe a musical work or style. Yet, as with other terms such as “affordable” in reference to housing, without context it is virtually meaningless: we need to know who is applying the term and to what it’s being compared. So, when I assert that most listeners will find the seven works on these two smartly programmed discs “accessible”, it is as much about what they are not than what they exhibit in style and musical substance.

For anyone at all concerned about setting forth on a journey through two hours of unfamiliar 20th century chamber works–string trios, no less!–be assured that throughout this program you will encounter nothing of the atonal, anti-melodic, thematically ambiguous, or deliberately arcane efforts that characterize many works from this same period (“Avant l’orage”, “before the storm”). Regarding the term “accessible”, you will find in each of these works not only a “way in” that’s familiar and (to most listeners) comprehensible, but music that is unfailingly captivating, thought-provoking, and challenging, all in ways that both entertain and enlighten. Now how can you do better than that?

Henri Tomasi’s Trio (1938), one of three recording world premieres on the disc, makes an excellent opener, its pleasingly assertive Prélude, an uneasy, restless Nocturne, mischievous Scherzo, and relentlessly energetic, folk-like Final drawing us in with an irresistible, festive air that also shows off the Black Oak Ensemble’s range of virtuosity, color, and style.

Jean Cras’ 1926 Trio has many highlights throughout its four substantial movements (24 minutes), but the fourth may be the most notable–a dance, whose rhythmic progression and character is anything but predictable!

Jean Françaix, successful performer and prolific composer who early on caught the attention of Ravel, dedicated his 1933 Trio to the three brothers who made up the Pasquier Trio (also the dedicatees of Tomasi’s Trio). You may never have seen a tempo designation of “Allegretto vivo” (this work’s first movement), but in their delightful, dexterous, precisely controlled moto perpetuo frenzy the Black Oak musicians leave no question as to their interpretation of the term! And has there ever been a Scherzo more deserving, or illustrative, of its name? Or played with a truer sense of joy and humor? The final Rondo is a fabulously virtuosic complex of rhythm and meter changes, and again these players nail the shifts and turns with requisite technical precision and musical flair.

If you know Robert Casadesus primarily–or exclusively–as a pianist, here’s your chance to get to know some of his scarce yet very fine work as a composer. His Trio à cordes from 1938, also dedicated to the Pasquier Trio–and also a world-premiere recording–may not be the most sophisticated or inventive work on the program, but it shows an intriguing interplay among instruments and well-developed sense of momentum by force of melodic/thematic development and strong rhythmic presence.

The third premiere recording is Gustave Samazeuilh’s 1937 Suite. Although its six movements are modeled on “the form of a Baroque dance suite”, you won’t hear anything stylistically related in the music itself. Yes, it’s very tonal, but has more in common with 19th-century Romanticism. And it’s all very lovely, originally written for piano and re-scored for, you guessed it, the Trio Pasquier. Here the Black Oak players seem to revel in the inherent opportunities for highlighting the music’s richness of timbre and singing melodies.

There are many other discoveries and delights to be found in the remaining trios by Émile Goué and Gabriel Pierné–which by now you will hopefully be looking forward to hearing for yourself. And I have to say that if I were one of the composers represented here I would feel blessed to have such advocates as the three musicians of Black Oak Ensemble: Desirée Ruhstrat (violin); Aurélien Fort Pederzoli (viola); David Cunliffe (violoncello).

This is difficult, challenging music that requires not only a comprehensive, deeply felt sense of style and prodigious technical facility, but an understanding of how to differentiate the expressive demands of a collection of pieces that are in some ways similar, but in more ways quite different, and how as an ensemble to make each stand out and stand in its own deserving space. Not only does the Black Oak Ensemble achieve this, but their effort makes you more than eager to hear the whole thing again. I’m happy to say that you’ll also learn a lot from the excellent notes by Elinor Olin. Accessible, enduring, enlightening, and highly recommended.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10, David Vernier)

Henri Tomasi’s vital and communicative string trio is a very satisfying work written in the minor, alternating some Debussy-isms with a Stravinskian touches. The third movement includes some truly fascinating polyrhythmic figures that drive the music forward through its bitonal theme and variants, and the Finale is even more interesting, including quite a bit of non-jazz syncopation.

The trio by Jean Cras is a little more old-style but not ultra-Romantic, at least not the way it’s played here. The music uses bitonality but is not as much on the edge as the Tomasi piece, yet it is still an interesting, well-written work.

The Goué Trio is bouncy and sprightly. It contains some novel ideas as well as shifting meters and tempi in its first movement, and the last movement is an ingenious recasting of tarantella rhythms.

The Françaix trio is in his usual modern-but-entertaining style, including funny “drunk”-sounding passages in the first and last movements, although it is not one of his works most frequently recorded, and the Black Oak Ensemble again plays this, as all the other works, in a peppy manner.

Unlike most of the other composers presented here, Robert Casedesus’ compositions are relatively few. This one has some fun with overlapping and interlocking rhythmic patterns, which the notes suggest might resemble some of his train travel. The music is interesting and a little eerie-sounding—at least, until a full stop introduces a surprisingly sprightly new theme in a fast 6/8. Once again, we have here a formerly unheard gem.

Gustave Samazeuilh’s trio is the most old-fashioned-sounding, by far, in this entire collection, a real late-Romantic piece played in a post-modern manner by the ensemble. The fourth-movement “Divertissement” uses some extended chords in its harmonic base, lively use of 3/4 rhythm, as well as interesting harmonic touches in the last-movement “Forlane.”

[This] is clearly an important release for its inclusion of so much good but rarely-heard and some formerly unrecorded music. It is definitely one of the best classical releases of the year.

--The Art Music Lounge (Lynn René Bayley)

A plunge among the sunken composers of Italian chamber music and the salvaged ones. The program recorded in this album is a ticket for a journey of a century and a half, that is the distance between the composition of the Sonata “con accompagnamento” by Muzio Clementi (1792) and its transformation into the Trio ortodosso by Alfredo Casella (1936). An intermediate stop is represented by the Trio op. 59 by Giuseppe Martucci (1882). The route of this journey retraces a history that is not unimportant or unsurprising: it summarises the significance and vicissitudes of the chamber music produced by Italian composers from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. In many texts of music history this topic is relegated in a note, or at most is dealt with in a paragraph, not even a chapter: an upgraded echo of the Fascist nationalism and dislike for Puccini that, for ideological reasons rather than for a historical or critical conviction, made themselves useful in raising the issue in the twentieth century. This recording, which presents a performance for piano, violin and cello, is a tiny artistic compensation, and an aesthetic and formal clarification. It leads us to consider and understand the role that Italian composers played also in the specific area of non-theatrical music.

To browse more of Josef Labor's chamber music recordings available on the Capriccio label, click here.

A total of around eighty compositions of Joseph Labor have survived. Among them are practically no occasional works, which is connected to the fact that he was blind: for him composition was a luxury, insofar as he had to rely on the help of a scribe who had to commit the work to paper. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous, and first and foremost melodious; it does not require a too complete concentration on itself. In Vienna, Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’s close circle of friends. This is already the third album release with this sensitive Chamber Music of an mostly forgotten composer.

REVIEW:

Clarinetist Jorg Wachsenegger, cellist Gerhard Walz, and pianist Holger Busch are active Viennese musicians who sometimes perform and record as Ensemble Tris. In this 2020 production, they turn to Austrian composer and teacher Josef Labor (1842-1924) and two of his autumnal works inspired by unfortunate circumstances.

Busch and Walz handle their parts with professionalism and expertise; and they alone enable the listener to appreciate Labor’s superb compositional skill, marvelous command of German conservative romanticism, and earnest and genuine nostalgia for an ostensibly simpler past. Wachsenegger, though, plays with a thin, hollow, and sometimes distasteful sound that in the Clarinet Trio spoils the texture and makes the reading difficult to digest. Only the Cello Sonata is worth the time.

-- American Record Guide