Aquinas Trio - Keyboard Trios 6 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

School of Language - Old Fears [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/08/2014

Haydn worked during a period that witnessed a great deal of stylistic change, including the evolution of keyboard instruments from the harpsichord to the pianoforte with it's hammer action and greater dynamic flexibility. These rarely heard but influential early Piano Trios include music originally conceived for piano solo or baryton trio. The Trio in F minor is unusual for it's elaborate ornamentation and darker key, and is highly at-tractive in it's youthful freshness. The acclaimed Aquinas Piano Trio brings these un-justly neglected works vividly to life.

?As one of the most celebrated composers of the late 18th century, Joseph Haydn can lay claim to being 'father of the piano trio' alongside that of other genres established in his lifetime such as the symphony and the string quartet. The delightful Divertimento in C major is a youthful work, but the later piano trios recorded here take on a heightened sophistication. Strings and keyboard are given a new independence of character in exquisitely crafted works such as the C minor Trio, with it's 'numerous and sometimes spectacular modulations', and oscillating enharmonic key changes that foreshadow Schubert can be heard in the Trio in D major.