Brahms Piano Trios

The Eroica Trio's recording career has been cleverly managed, starting with three albums of relatively lightweight, very well played music before finally arriving at major repertory. Tackling these two Brahms masterpieces, the Eroica proves thoroughly up to the task. They handle Brahms's difficult writing with confidence (especially the tricky syncopations), and they can produce large climaxes to compete with the best ensembles.

The Odeon Trio go for gold. Unlike either the Beaux Arts (Philips) or the Fontenay (Teldec), they use three CDs to include everything by Brahms that could possibly be called a piano trio, not forgetting the Op. 114 and Op. 40 wind trios, whose wind parts can well be rendered by strings. They decide, too, that the original 1853 version of the B major Trio is for them, rather than the revised version of 1889 which is more generally favoured.

Robust? Vigorous? Muscular? None of those adjectives even come close to describing these performances by the French Trio Wanderer of Brahms' three piano trios and G minor Piano Quartet. The opening theme of the Allegro con brio in the B flat Trio has rarely sounded so lushly sonorous. The passage work of the Scherzo in the C major Trio has not often been so incredibly relentless. The unisons at the start of the C minor Trio have never been so immensely powerful.

Brahms (1833-97) devoted much of the 1880s to his three Piano Trios, having decided, as he told a friend, that there was “no further point in attempting an opera or a marriage”. They are among his less familiar chamber works. He originally wrote No 1 as a young man, overhauling it more than three decades later in 1889. All three works – the B major Op 8, C major Op 87 and C minor Op 101 – have a tender, shadowy intensity, without quite the same heart-on-sleeve fervour of the bigger chamber works. The string players here – brother and sister Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff – are regular quartet partners. Together with sensitive pianism from Lars Vogt, ensemble is alert, accurate, never forced: already a favourite CD.

This duo set unites all of Brahms’ Piano Trios, masterpieces of the genre, in performances of integrity and beauty from the Trio Fontenay.

World-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his longtime collaborator, pianist Emanuel Ax, are joined by violinist Leonidas Kavakos in their first recording together of all three of the piano trios of Johannes Brahms. Ma and Ax have built together a distinguished catalogue of Brahms recordings, but this is their first recording of the Piano Trios and their first collaboration with Kavakos.

Instead of forming a permanent chamber ensemble, violinist Renaud Capuçon and his brother, cellist Gautier Capuçon, prefer to work with different partners, whom they choose for particular skills and strong affinities for a given project. For this double-disc of Brahms' Piano Trios, they have enlisted pianist Nicholas Angelich, a friend and frequent participant in their concerts of Romantic chamber music. Their camaraderie fosters a conversational approach, and their performances are convivial and fleet, with a greater emphasis on momentum than on gravitas.

Brahms keenly sensed the shadow of Beethoven, saying “You do not know what it is like, hearing his footsteps constantly behind one.” It was this towering presence that spurred the young Brahms to master his craft and establish his voice.