Trio Origo - Clarinet Trios - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The history of large-scale works for clarinet, cello and piano began with the two trios composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1797 and 1803. Soon after Beethoven's trios were published, several of his contemporaries were also inspired to compose trios for these instruments. Adalbert Gyrowetz (1763-1850), a prolific Bohemian composer active in Vienna, wrote chamber music that aligned with the elegant, balanced style of the Classical period. His clarinet trios often follow the model popularized by Beethoven and others clarinet, cello, and piano. They highlight the clarinet's lyrical qualities while maintaining a conversational equality among the three instruments. Gyrowetz's music tends to favor charm and clarity over dramatic intensity, providing insight into the salon culture of early nineteenth-century Vienna.Johann Heinrich Volckmar (1770-1840), though less widely remembered, contributed to the clarinet trio genre with works that blend Classical formality with touches of early Romantic color. His trios display a clear sense of melody, often assigning the clarinet bright, song-like lines while the piano provides both harmonic support and moments of virtuosity. Volckmar's writing exemplifies how regional composers outside the central canon engaged with the clarinet's expressive potential, even if their works remained on the periphery of mainstream concert life.Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), a student and close associate of Beethoven, represents a later stage in the trio tradition. His clarinet trios show a more Romantic sensibility, with broader structures, heightened contrasts, and more demanding instrumental writing. Ries imbues his works with dramatic flair and lyrical warmth, reflecting both Beethoven's influence and his own individual voice. Together, the trios of Gyrowetz, Volckmar, and Ries trace the clarinet's evolution from Classical elegance to Romantic expressi

The dates are deceptive the Viennese composer Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953) remained largely unaffected by the turbulent musical currents swirling around him in the Austrian capital during the early 20th century. Instead, he composed highly appealing music, Romantic in harmony and Classical in form, with a particular focus on the guitar. Brilliant Classics have brought his name back to light in recent years with modern recordings of the duets for clarinet and guitar (94171), the quartets for guitar, flute and strings (9250) and the sonatas for flute and guitar (9291). In a similar vein, the Italian Esteso Trio now presents three variation sets scored for clarinet, flute and guitar. The first of them is based on an Austrian folksong and conceived as a series of homages to Rebay's Viennese forebears Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Johann Strauss. The second takes a Tirolean folksong for inspiration and Rebay supplied his own theme for the third, again popular in character and ending with an ebullient Scherzo. In between these highly attractive variation sets, the Esteso Trio plays a Trio and a Spanish Rhapsody', both likewise dedicated to Rebay's niece, the concert guitarist Gerta Hammerschmied, who apparently inspired the composer's passion for the instrument 'Meiner lieben Gerta! Ostern 1941' reads the title page of the Trio. Rebay worked as a piano professor at the conservatoire and composed prolifically in his spare time - more than 600 works bear his name - in a spirit of relaxed craftsmanship that makes an hour spent in his company full of uncomplicated pleasure. 'Rebay was no dilettante - as tuneful as his music always is, it is unfailingly imaginative' (MusicWeb International).

The combination of oboe, clarinet and bassoon attracted several French composers in the first half of the last century and inspired witty and elegant divertissements from the likes of Ibert, Francaix and Poulenc. But the character of the trio held an appeal to composers farther afield, as this album shows, and that appeal was by no means confined to 'light music', even if all the music on this album - from Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary - shares a lightness and airiness of texture. The composers from eastern Europe - Lutoslawski, Schulhoff and Veress - all suffered under totalitarian regimes, and Schulhoff died at the hands of the Nazis, but their painful histories do not cast a long shadow over the pieces on this album. In fact, the origins of Lutoslawski's Trio are found precisely in the exercises of counterpoint he realized in the winter of 1944-5, when he had been forced to flee Warsaw, together with his mother, following the consequences of the Warsaw Rising. The Trio is a quirky, restlessly experimental work. The wind trio as laboratory also held appeal to Sandor Veress, who found a very personal synthesis of his own research into Hungarian folksong with the 12-tone theories of the Second Viennese School. The outer movements of his Sonatina abound in the madcap humor of his compatriot Ligeti, while the central Andante introduces a gravely memorable theme on the bassoon. Schulhoff's Divertissement is naturally the most French-sounding work on the album, a set of seven compact character sketches including a Charleston (No.4) and 'Florida' (No.6). Known in some quarters as the 'Russian Brahms' from the country of his birth, Paul Juon is the least-known figure here, but not the least accomplished, and his Arabesque is a substantial, four-movement structure launched in fine style by Commodo movement with echoes of Nielsen at his breeziest.