ARENSKY; SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Trios (Trio Con Brio Copenhagen)

Record and Artist Details

Genre:

Chamber

Label: Orchid Classics

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 70

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: ORC100181

ORC100181. ARENSKY; SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Trios (Trio Con Brio Copenhagen)

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Piano Trio No. 1 Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Trio con Brio
Piano Trio No. 2 Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Trio con Brio

The teenage Shostakovich’s single-movement First Trio is obviously not a patch on the mature second – the structural seams show and the artful transitions between sections over-compensate. But it remains an extremely interesting piece from the personal point of view, as a love letter to the first serious passion in the composer’s life, and historically too, as a bold essay in large-scale sonata form leading up to the First Symphony. Trio Con Brio Copenhagen’s affectionate swooping and sliding in the Scriabinesque lyrical sections are entirely appropriate to the idiom, and their passionate momentum in the fast themes is equally spot on.

Arensky’s D minor Trio is a brilliant choice of coupling, not only because it is one of his best pieces (the last two movements don’t quite live up to the promise of the first two) but because it showcases the late-Romantic environment Shostakovich was clearly trying to emulate. Trio Con Brio bring lovely flexibility and breadth of phrasing to the first movement, and the Scherzo has charm, wit and dexterity aplenty (a dab less pedal from the piano and it would have been ideal for me). All in all, this is the kind of performance that gives you a fair chance of falling in love with the piece if you haven’t already done so.

In this context Shostakovich’s Second Trio emerges not just as a flawless, fully mature masterpiece but as a wholesale rethinking of what the genre can encompass – he was standing on the shoulders of the commemorative trios of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov but at the same time surveying far wider horizons. It is hard to give a performance that does not radiate passion and drama, so readily does the music jump off the page. But it is harder still to negotiate the structural accumulations with the aplomb the Copenhagen ensemble brings to them. The strings add klezmer-like glides in the finale, in a way closing the arc of the album from their romantic account of the First Trio. This is the kind of intervention that risks adding nothing and may even detract from more important issues. But not this time. Here it feels as though everything adds up to a completely thought-through and deeply felt interpretation. And bravo again to the violinist and cellist for following the score in adding mutes at the climax (it’s astonishing how many recordings fail to follow this expressively vital instruction).

In every way, then, this is an outstanding achievement, and I only hope the disc gets the acclaim it deserves.

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