Boulanger Trio - Piano Trios - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

With the three piano trios Op. 1 Ludwig van Beethoven took a genre still largely associated with entertaining salon music, and raised it up to rival the string quartet. The works are innovative in form as well as in content - especially so in the case of the Trio No. 3 in C minor, Beethoven's trademark key. It is therefore fitting that the Sitkovetsky Trio has chosen this work to open their cycle of the composer's piano trios. That the C minor trio was pioneering is illustrated by the fact that Haydn, who at the time was Beethoven's teacher, advised against it's publication. He feared that it would not 'be understood so quickly and easily' - but the world as Haydn knew it was clearly changing and the trios became a commercial success as well as harbingers of a new musical aesthetic. Some twenty years later, in 1813 when E. T.A. Hoffmann reviewed the two Op. 70 trios, the new era was firmly established, and to Hoffmann the works confirmed 'how Beethoven carries the Romantic spirit of music deep within his soul'. Between the two complete trios recorded here, the Sitkovetskys include Beethoven's last contribution to the piano trio genre, the little Allegretto in B flat major, WoO 39. It was composed in June 1812 for Maximiliane Brentano, the ten-year-old daughter of Franz and Antonie Brentano - or, as it says on the title page of the autograph manuscript, 'for my little friend Maxe Brentano, to encourage her piano playing'.

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 it's more serious moments. On it's 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 it's high point in the great breadth and unforgettable melodiousness of the third movement.

?With the three piano trios, Op. 1, Ludwig van Beethoven took a genre still largely associated with salon music and raised it up to rival the string quartet. The works are innovative in form as well as in content. From this collection, the Trio in G major, Op. 1 No. 2, appears as a cheerful and engaging work. While it has been said that one could discern 'the master's happy youth [...] still unclouded, light and frivolous', hints of 'the deep seriousness and tender intimacy that would follow' can also be found. Knowing very well that well-placed dedications could result in princely rewards, Beethoven dedicated his Piano Trio in B flat major, Op. 97, to the Archduke Rudolph of Austria, hence it's nickname, 'Archduke' Trio. With this work, Beethoven bade farewell to the genre with arguably his most important contribution, a trio of which a critic wrote that in it 'genius, art, nature, truth, spirit, originality, invention, execution, taste, power, fire, imagination, loveliness, deep feeling and lively jesting entwine in sisterly harmony'. After the success of it's Ravel and Saint-Saëns trios recording [BIS-2219], the Sitkovetsky Trio presents the eagerly awaited second instalment of it's series devoted to Beethoven's piano trios. Details 1. I. Adagio - Allegro Vivace [12 09] 2. II. Largo Con Espressione [10 31] 3. III. Scherzo Allegro [03 44] 4. IV. Finale Presto [08 02] 5. I. Allegro Moderato [13 41] 6. II. Scherzo Allegro [11 03] 7. III. Andante Cantabile Ma Però Con Moto - [12 55] 8. IV. Allegro Moderato - Presto [06 55]