Crisp, brightly sharp-edged and powerful, vibrato-less and pleasantly dry, the opening chord of Haydn’s Piano Trio in E minor, HobXV:12, certainly means business under the fingers of young Swiss-French Trio Ernest as it kicks off this debut album from the group. The impression of a confident and strongly distinctive ensemble only increases when you take in the tightly thematic and enterprising nature of the programme as a whole, with its inclusion of a 2007 piece by Belgian composer Jacqueline Fontyn (b1930). So no surprise to then read in the biography that not only do these players describe Trio Ernest as ‘firmly rooted in its time’, and committed to programming a work by a woman in each and every concert, but that they have also been impressing a great many people in different places. Notable awards include, in the trio’s formation year of 2019, First Prize at the Orpheus Chamber Music Competition in Zurich; also the Chamber Music Award of Vienna’s ISA Festival. Residencies include the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in Brussels. This April they tour China, and they are currently also honing their skills further with conductor and former Quatuor Ébène viola player Mathieu Herzog.

Back to ‘Haydn All-Stars’, and the album pays tribute to this prolific writer of piano trios through four of his own (Nos 25, 41, 20 and 45), complemented by three works written by later composers under his inspiration: the aforementioned Fontyn work, Lieber Joseph!, a compact three-movement trio into which Haydn motifs and fragments are woven, plus trio arrangements by Carlos Roque Alsina of Ravel’s Menuet sur le nom de Haydn and Brahms’s lied ‘Immer leiser’, with its theme borrowed from Haydn’s Sonata in C minor.

The Haydn readings are period-aware, with a fantastic freshness, energy and range of colour. Sticking with the E minor Trio, its central Andante is an instant charmer for the spirit and spring imbued within its smartly rhythmic courtliness, and for the piano’s bell-like tone; followed by a similarly beautifully judged balancing act over the concluding Presto, the playing as poised and neat as it is vivacious. The ensuing Ravel is equally lucid-textured but now in softer, gently vibrato’d tones, and with a new whimsy to its lilt. There’s more lucidity, crisp definition and poised playfulness for the Fontyn’s delicately fluttering modern sound world, with its ear-pricking extended techniques for all three instruments, then a Romanticism-breathed sepia quality to the Brahms.

A strong debut, and I hope to see more from these three on Aparté in the future.