Airy, transparent, light as a feather – if any composer’s music answers to these attributes, then it is that of Maurice Ravel, including his Piano...

Airy, transparent, light as a feather – if any composer’s music answers to these attributes, then it is that of Maurice Ravel, including his Piano Trio, even if this work too has its more serious moments. On its newest Super Audio album the Vienna Piano Trio brings together this marvelously unique achievement and a very differently gripping trio by Ernest Chausson – a fascinating contrast and one most beautifully celebrated by our Vienna threesome. Chausson composed his trio as an act of defiance. He had abandoned his study of composition without a diploma and had recently retired to the countryside. As if he wanted to show all his critics and especially the jurors of the Prix de Rome what he could do: in the Piano Trio an impetuous artist assumes a revolutionary and romantic expressive stance. This begins already in the impassioned first movement, to whose themes he repeatedly returns during the course of the other parts, and reaches its high point in the great breadth and unforgettable melodiousness of the third movement.

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REVIEW:

The Trio's finely honed interpretation of the Ravel is charactized by finesse, maturity, and lucidity. Chausson’s Franck-inspired Trio makes a great pairing. There are some breathtakingly lyrical moments in the violin and cello here, and the rich piano figuration never feels laboured.

– Gramophone